TeenVengers, ASSEMBLE!
by Relena Duo
Summary: In another world the Avengers are all born several years after they were supposed to, yet they were still saddled with the same responsibilities. Or, Teen Avengers Assembling and attempting at building a life of their own and finding family in the team. Longer summary inside.
1. PROLOGUE

**In another world the Avengers are all born several years after they were supposed to, yet they were still saddled with the same responsibilities.**

 **Or the story of a 12 year old Tony escaping from months of torture in a cave to face his destiny as Iron Man, a little sickly 12 year old boy from Brooklyn gets taken in by the army to be experimented on and becomes a national icon having to guide his best friend - among other - through a war, a little girl turned a spy redeeming herself, a little boy with a penchant for arrows who got himself a spot in an international spy organization, a genius boy having a deadly experiment blow up in his face and surviving with devastating consequences, a prince of another realm trying to live up to expectations, another prince trying to live with the lack of expectations of him and a terrible truth. And many more stories of children faced with the burden of the safety of the world coming to rest on their shoulders despite their young age and somewhat coping - and then learning to cope as a family.**

* * *

 **So, I've been working in this story for months and its all written down up until Doctor Strange. I'm waiting till I see Infinity War before I continue cause of various plot points that I'm afraid will stop making sense if I'm not aware of all that's gonna happen there.**  
 **Good news is I have so many chapters already written that you'll still be seeing new chapters by the time Infinity War comes out.**  
 **Bad news is I'm entering third year at uni this year and I'm aiming to get the yellow belt in Aikido this year so there might be times where I disappear. Nothing I can do about it really.**  
 **So, updating schedule: I plan on updating this every Thursday. I previously planned on doing this every Friday or maybe Wednesday, but I have my Aikido classes on those days. I also considered doing this on Saturdays, but I often end up doing other shit those days, mostly uni projects, classes of whatever or simply an outing since I also happen to have a social life(miracle of miracles). But I;m confident that I'll be supplying you without any interruptions(bar any serious rl stuff) with new chapters for the next 20 weeks or so.**  
 **Written words for this story are currently about 70k on computer and I have more than 10 chapters already planned out and about another 10 in the doubts.**

 **So this story came to me one day when I was browsing Pinterest and saw images of chibi Avengers and I set myself on search of any Avengers fics where they aren't de-aged that might be good. Didn't find any that I liked all that much so I decided to take it upon myself.**

 **Anyways, all hail the chibi-Avengers and enjoy your reading! 3**

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PROLOGUE

"So you're probably asking yourself, how did a bunch of teenagers become Earth's mightiest heroes? Well, it all started with me, of course, because I'm awesome!"

"Tony!"

Sigh, "Fine, fine, the rest might also be awesome and all that – not as much as me though-"

"Tony, do not make me call Pepper on you!"

"Oh my gosh, look at Steve's face!"

"Don't point Clint, its rude!"

"You're no boss of m-ack! Sorry! Sorry! Lemme go already!"

"Guuuuuuuyyyyssss! You're stealing me thunder here!"

"Man of Iron, the only one here with thunder is-"

"Oh shut it Thor, you know it's only a Midgardian expression."

"Yeah Thor, get learned."

"Clint, I swear to-"

"Can you stop it already?! You know the cameras are still rolling, do you? This is supposed to be my moment!"

"Okay, okay team, let's leave Mr. Fancypants here have his moment."

"Excuse you, Mr. Fancypants? That's a terrible nickname Rhodey. I'm disappointed, I'm deeply disappointed."

"Does the Man of Iron even have pants that are fancy? I have only ever seen him wear those blue pants full of tears."

"Those are jeans Thor, you know this, you've fucking worn them yourself!"

"Language!"

"I'll have you know that those jeans with tears are top quality, thank you very much!"

"But why do they have tears?"

"For goodness sake Thor, that's just how they are! You know this!"

"He's being obnoxious on purpose, leave him alone for a while and it'll pass."

"Look how cute his pouty face is!"

"M'n't cu't"

"What's that Thor? Stop mumbling."

"Leave him alone!"

"FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THINGS HOLY, CAN WE GET THIS THING STARTED ALREADY?!"

…

…

…

Cough, "Okay, back to you, camera one. So, as I was saying, all this started with me a couple years ago. I was still a little innocent boy back then- Stop giggling! Ahem, so it was a couple years ago, fine, not that many, but still, I've grown since then! I have medical evidence of this! Don't look at me like that Steve, this is serious stuff! So, let's start at the beginning of this whole new world.

You see, I was 12 when I was overseeing a weapon I had, at the time, secretly designed for Stark Industries. Back then it was a secret that I had been designing weapons for ages for the company, Stane had me believe that if somebody found out terrible things would happen. I would never be able to continue with all my projects. I was pretty stupid back then. But even if this was a well-kept secret, somebody apparently figured it out and told the Ten Rings about it, so they decided they wanted to have the duck that lays the golden eggs- what? Goose? Why the fuck is it a goose? No-stop looking at me like that Steve! And I'm sure it was a duck! Whatever, you get the gist.

So there I was, travelling the desert as a treat from my then friend and guardian, Obadiah Stane, when suddenly the world went up in flames. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how I got kidnapped."


	2. IRON MAN

**Posting another chapter since Prologue is short af**

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IRON MAN

He'd been in that cave for months, yet it had felt like years for him. He'd gone in a spoilt brat and came out as a hardened man of 12. When the military finally picked him up after wondering the desert for over a day he was sure things would never be the same, that he would never be the same. But when he was picked up at the airport by Happy, both Pepper and Rhodey were waiting for him in the limo. No hide or hint about Obie.

When the military had rescued him, he'd been mostly still in a state of shock, after all he'd seen and had happened to him, so when he climbed into the limo to find his two closest friends with him and Happy at the wheel – he broke down.

Pepper, sweet little Pepper, who he had met when her father once brought her to the company for the bring your child to work day roughly 2 years ago. And Rhodey, big reliable Rhodey, who he had met at a military airplane exhibition even longer ago. Sure, there was an age gap, with Pepper being a year younger and Rhodey being three years older, but they had managed to become glued to each other with the years.

He cried until he had no more tears that day, until he fell asleep, still crying as he was held by his two closest friends. The next day he woke up in his bedroom in his Malibu mansion. At first, he freaked out and started to call for Yinsen, until JARVIS began talking until he calmed down. Half the day went by before he decided he was calm enough to leave his bedroom and venture further into his house.

Obie showed up with dinner – some fancy cooked food that even included caviar – and told him how happy he was to have him back. Tony felt eerily distanced by the whole thing. Nothing that Obie said meant much to him. It wasn't until Obie came to the part where he spoke of hoping Tony would soon jump back in into designing and constructing weapons for Stark Industries that Tony had any reaction to what he was being told.

"No."

Obie didn't react too brightly to that. Tony had a brief moment of panic when Obie began pacing up and down and threw off of the dinner table what was left from what he had brought. Luckily Tony had stepped back so nothing collided with him. Obie calmed down a bit after that and, body still tense, he exhaled strongly and forced a smile on his face, took Tony's shoulders in his hands and then told him it was okay to have doubts at the moment and how it was all just a phase.

When he was gone Tony went to his room and curled up in a ball on the floor in one of the corners. He stayed there for a few hours until he got up and went to his lab slash garage. He turned on the TV, his music, all his computers and robots, all in an attempt to create as much noise as possible.

He began designing the Mark II around 3 am and only paused when it was around midday because he wanted to call Pepper and Rhodey to meet up again. They arrive by dinner time, as his new suit was in construction. Pepper brought cheeseburgers and he instantly declared her his favorite. They ate as they watched the comedy movies that Rhodey had brought. It was the first time since that time in the caves when Yinsen was telling old family anecdotes that he laughed. They left close to midnight, both of them promising to come back the next day. Tony went back to the living room and sat on the couch they had all been sharing. It was still warm from when they sat on it. He lay down and fell asleep almost immediately.

He dreamed about Yinsen and woke up at 4 am and went back to his garage and discovered his new suit finished. He decided to take it on a ride and experienced the most wonderful feeling he had ever felt – flying. He also discovered that he couldn't go as high as he wished he could, he did this by almost dying so he decided that he needed to fix this issue before he found himself flying high again and accidentally forgot that he had limits. As the final version of his suit was being constructed he received a visit from Pepper claiming there was this guy from some government agency that wanted to speak with him. Instantly Tony was on the verge of a panic attack, seeing as all government agencies had to pass through Obie – his guardian – before they were allowed to get to him and he knew for a fact that Obie didn't want any of them near him. Tony suspected it had to do with the fact that he'd been the actual one that had been designing the company's weapons and tech for years now. This was the reason he didn't go to school after all and instead got homeschooled.

He greeted Agent Coulson – from the longest named agency he had ever heard – and told him as politely as he can that he would rather speak another day if it was possible. It deeply surprised him when the man accepted this and gave not only him, but also Pepper his card. As Tony stared on in astonishment that he was still alive, Pepper was gushing at his side over how nice the man was. Since he was trying to be nice to her he only rolled his eyes and told her he was going to order the biggest pizza LA had to offer and promptly disappeared into his mansion. As they waited for both the pizza and Rhodey to arrive Tony took Pepper's hands in his and told her that he needed her help with something.

Years later, she still hasn't forgiven him for that stunt he pulled off.

When they were all back in the kitchen, a giant box of pizza on the counter and Pepper sufficiently clean – after she washed her hands for seven times, each time with a different type of soap – and Rhodey set to arrive in less than five minutes, Tony felt content for the first time in ages.

He never had the opportunity to feel content in the caves, no matter how hard Yinsen tried to help him through all the torture and trauma, he never could make the cave feel like home. He remembered those nights when it was so cold he couldn't even sleep and he curled up into a ball at Yinsen's side and he not only let him, but hugged him closer and gave him a bit of his blanket. He would even sometimes sing a song in some strange language until Tony stopped shivering or crying, or both.

His thoughts about Yinsen hardened his resolve, and so when Rhodey and Pepper left for their homes he went back to his garage to work on his suit. When he arrived in his garage he found out that the TV was still on and was now showing a news flash of some place in Afghanistan. His blood went cold when he saw them use weapons from Stark Industries – weapons he designed – being used to hurt innocent people. Children. Yinsen had once told him in whispers how despicable he found it that their kidnappers where hurting him, a child, for their nefarious reasons. When he said those words Tony had been able to infer how deeply Yinsen loathed the idea of children being hurt.

Tony made a decision right then and there. He got into his suit and flew all the way to Afghanistan and destroyed every single piece of weapon he could find that had the name Stark on it. On his way back he had some trouble with the Air Force, but was able to outmaneuver them and get back home in one piece.

Later, when he came home he began hacking SI's files in search for the person that was selling weapons to the Ten Rings. With time he came to realize that he would have to get to Obie's computer himself if he wanted to get the information.

The next day he tried to get into the company and was instantly stopped by security. To make matters worse they told him to wait for Mr. Stane before he could leave. He went to the Reactor Building and sulked around for almost an hour before Obadiah came to him. Things got tense soon, again. This time Obadiah had him backed up until he was against the wall, with him leaning over him and telling in no uncertain tones that he wouldn't be allowed back into the company until he got back to work again. It dawned on him later, as he was taking a cold shower in an attempt to calm down that Obadiah was trying to get all the juice out of him, almost like he was on a time constrict. It scared Tony to be honest.

Pepper came by the next day with the gift of his old Arc Reactor, all cleaned up and written on with a sharpie 'Proof that Tony Stark has a Heart'. He decided to put it in the center of one of his tables in the garage and had Dummy fetch a glass case for it so he could later move it to his bedroom.

Later, that same day he called in Pepper and asked her if she could help him with something. After he reassured her a couple times that it had nothing to do with his chest cavity she came over to his house where he told her his master plan. She informed him that there was nothing masterful in his plan and that he was crazy. It took long to convince her, but in the end he prevailed.

In his defense, his plan would totally have worked out had Obadiah not come to his house the next day, paralyzed him and stole his Arc Reactor. Hindsight really was 20/20.

Rhodey had to come in and drag him all the way to his lab and put in his old Arc Reactor before he was able to do much. His body was simply too small and frail to stand up to big heart conditions like having shrapnel digging into them 24/7. When he was finally coherent enough he had to trick Rhodey into letting go of him so that he could sneak to where his suit was and put it on. He vowed to make the process faster as he got assembled and constantly felt Rhodey's disapproving stare on him.

He arrive just in the nick of time before Pepper and Agent Agent were about to get smashed by the most awful thing he had ever had the misfortune to lay his eyes on. Who had designed that thing? Didn't they have any sense of fashion? Where was the passion for the art in this thing?! Nowhere, that's what.

It was still a difficult fight, and Pepper had been scared witless by the time he told her that she had to blow up the Reactor, but she still prevailed and was able to save the day while he lay on the roof, waiting for the paramedics to kart him off somewhere nice and dry and warm. He fell unconscious before they arrived.

When he was finally allowed out of the hospital he was in a world of legal problems since his guardian had just died and he was still a minor and had also been involved in the death of his previously mentioned guardian. Fortunately he had a plan for that, one that he had set JARVIS on days earlier, before his case became a top priority. It involved breaking at least a dozen laws and who knew what else, but he had managed to get himself registered under JARVIS's guardianship. It had been pretty difficult creating a new identity for JARVIS so that he could appear as an American citizen, but at the end JARVIS was officially a person and he was now not only Tony's guardian, but also the new CEO of Stark Industries. As if that hadn't been enough, his first announcement was the seize in production of all weapons from SI. It was a wonderful day for Tony.

At first it had seemed like he would have to fight literary everybody on the legitimacy of JARVIS's existence, but then Agent Agent had appeared at his doorstep one day and asked what he pretended to do next.

Tony had half a dozen smart ass answers ready, but he decided that it was maybe for the best that he was honest for just this once in his life.

"Make this world a better place", he answered.

Agent Agent looked thoughtful for a moment, thanked him for his time and then left.

It seemed to have been the right answer to give since from that moment on most of his legal problems suddenly found themselves solved. Not all of them, but the most important one of his guardianship was as legitimate now as anybody's now.

Everything was finally like he wanted it.

And then came the press conference where he had to talk about his late guardian's recent death and Iron Man's – as the press had taken to call him – involvement in it.

Agent Agent gave him a card and told him what to say. Tony wondered if anybody had ever told the poor man that this was not the way you dealt with Tony Stark. Whatever, Tony didn't let himself feel bad over it for a long time – it literary lasted less than five minutes.

He went before the press, and at that moment he still genuinely had good intentions, but as he reread the card Agent Agent had given him he decided that it could go fuck it, threw it over his shoulder and told the world he was Iron Man.

Now, everything really was how wanted it.


	3. IRON MAN 2

**So this chapter is basically the same thing that the Iron Man 2 movie was, a buildup to the Avengers. I promise a better chapter for next week.**

* * *

It was one of those ideas that came to him while he was taking one of his now daily cold showers that he took to stave off the fevers he was starting to get. One of his most prized things in this world were his tech and his company – and wasn't it just a delight to call it _his_? Sure, Stark Industries was on JARVIS's name, but he was the one that ran it in essence. So how could he make sure that both outlived him? The Stark Expo of course! His old man had last launched it before when he was still a baby so he didn't remember anything about it.

He made it big, as big as he possibly could. The world would remember this Expo and the last of the Starks if he had anything to say about it.

He worked throughout the night many times to have only the best at the Expo, only changing his palladium cores when his body screamed at him to take it easier. Pepper was constantly fighting with him over all the shit he pulled and Rhodey had a constant face of disappointment on. Tony ignored it all the best he could and asked JARVIS to find another one of his invaluable art collections a new home.

He began writing up code for JARVIS to follow when he inevitably died, at the sad age of 13. Right after his birthday too. He had cried himself to sleep a couple times over it, but then he decided he wanted Pepper and Rhodey to remember him as his old self, not into what he would probably become in his last hours.

So, with this mindset in place he went to visit Pepper at her house and met her new neighbor Natalie. Natalie was a pretty, 14 year old redhead with lots of curls and a really nice personality. Pepper was just so glad to not be the only girl in the group anymore that nobody minded Natalie's presence much at the beginning, but then with time it was like she had always been there. It was because of this feeling Tony invited Natalie along when he decided to go see the racing in Monaco. Pepper, Natalie and Rhodey had to take off at school a few days, but they were all excited for the races – except maybe Natalie, there were times where Tony just wasn't sure if Natalie's emotions were genuine or just expertly faked.

It wasn't like Tony had planned to take over racing one of the cars beforehand, but when he saw his blood poisoning levels that day he decided that common sense could go fuck itself and took over that racing car. He was doing really good as well, he was well on his way to winning and probably breaking the record as youngest driver ever when Vanko came and tried to kill him. Tony was so thankful for his fast reflexes since he almost got mutilated a good couple times before Happy arrived with the peanut gallery in the back seat and threw him his suit(case). Ha.

The fight was over briefly, mostly because Tony's suit really was the very best thing ever and the other guy's thing, while decent, just wasn't on the same level. For some reason Pepper got really angry when he told her just that after they cleared the area and let her and the rest of the peanut gallery out of the wrecked car.

It all just caused a lot of troubles for him. The government had been making noises about taking away his suit – what for? It wouldn't fit any of them – and probably would have tried to do something had he not been a minor, but now it had really intensified. He knew that behind most of the noise was that idiot Hammer, who he had seen at Monaco and had wanted to punch in the teeth then, but had refrained himself from doing.

On his way back to LA he tried to at least get Pepper aside on his privet plane to explain to her about his impending death, but she, along with everybody else, was still pissed at him for what he'd pulled at Monaco. Especially for the visit he had done afterwards to Vanko in his cell.

He was so done with everything, back at his home, that he accidently let the time go by for too long and before he knew it, he was past his time to change his palladium core. He literary had to drag himself on the floor of his lab to get a new core. His end was near – but so was his birthday, so he decided to have his last one ever with the biggest bang he could.

He let everybody in that wanted to come, let the DJ go wild, let the barista serve whatever to whomever wanted and he also had a lady jump out of a giant cake. He also got sure to get drunk, just so he could know how it felt before he died. He also almost smoked pot, but Rhodey had made it past the dancing mob by then and physically hauled him up and, the giggling mess that he was, made him sit in his tub as he showered him with ice cold water while Pepper watched on, tears rolling down her face as she asked repeatedly what had gotten into him and what did he think he was doing.

Later, he would realize that Natalie only stared at him impassively the whole time.

Unfortunately, it all didn't end in the shower, Tony managed to slip out and made Rhodey chase him around the house until they were in the lab, where he had left one of his 'early prototypes' conveniently for Rhodey while he put on his own suit. Rhodey hesitated for a moment before he ran to the 'prototype' and in no time was he putting Tony down for good that night. He left angry and still in the suit, Pepper and Natalie were nowhere to be seen either.

Tony decided in the early hours of the morning that he wanted to have donuts, so he flew to one of the best places he knew of.

It really did surprise the hell out of him when some Secret Agent of a sort – with the most ironic name ever – came and gave him a pep talk. Not as much as discovering Natalie was not Natalie at all, but also a secret agent of some sort.

They shipped him off back to his mansion after giving him a partial cure and gave him his dad's old junk to figure out a 'real cure'. Sure, why not. Why fucking not, those bastards sons of-

The big surprise was that there was actually something to be found in all that junk after all – and that his dad loved him? Tony didn't really remember his parents at all, he was 4 when they died and all he really could summon up from his memories were their constant fights and that one time his mom told him she loved him. From what Tony later understood, this was the last thing she ever said to him. It made him feel kinda fuzzy on the inside when he thought of that, but also pretty sad.

It took him a lot of work and lots of help from the bots to construct what he needed in order to create a new element. He almost didn't make it, one of the bots had to come help push at the crowbar near the end, his own arms proving to be insufficient.

At some time Agent Agent had left him to work his genius alone, so when he realized that a bunch of drones from Hammer were going to attack the Expo he had no option but to slap on the new core without testing and fly off to rescue the day. When he arrived he found something completely unexpected yet not unpleasant at all. Rhodey was there, in the suit Tony had let him steal and saving people's lives. He patched into Rhodey's suit and they managed to plan out a coordinated attack on the drones while Pepper was in the background saying something about Natalie having saved her life by attacking a drone with her thighs and having called the police on Hammer.

It was all pretty bizzare, but Tony had no doubt that every word Pepper had said was truth. He was also kinda glad that he wouldn't have to be the one to break it to his friends that Natalie wasn't exactly Natalie, but Natasha. Seeing as they were winning the fight with the drones, Natalie had Vanko's coordinates and Pepper was having Hammer fucking arrested he decided that it was as good time as any to let it 'slip' that he had been actually dying the last couple months.

They – they didn't react too well to that. They reacted so bad that Vanko, in his new fancy suit, was able to land a pretty hard blow on him and Rhodey. He was almost thankful for the attack since it distracted both Rhodey and Pepper from the fact that he had almost died. Tony was no idiot and he knew that this was far from being over and once everything was back under control they would chew him out for not telling them. The battle though – Tony had to say that felt pretty damn proud of the team work he and Rhodey had. They worked almost seamlessly until Vanko was down and when they discovered the Expo was going to explode they were both able to take care of each other and meet at the outsides of the Expo to grab Pepper and fly her all the way back to Tony's home. She didn't appreciate the trip as much as they had hoped.

At the end they had to mend bridges and Tony was finally feeling like he could move forward in his life. He had so many projects in his head that he would now be able to see into completion that it was overwhelming and he was left for about a week just trying to decide which thing he would do first. After much debate he decided that building a new skyscraper in New York running on renewable energy was the first step. He could barely wait to begin, JARVIS had even began designing the building and it was looking awesome already.

Long life, here he came!

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 **So you know that thing when you encourage people to do a thing and they do the exact opposite?**  
 **I don't want any of you to leave a comment or anything related. Not at all. Nope.**


	4. THOR

**Guess who is one of my favorite characters in the MCU?**  
 **Loki! *confetti throwing***  
 **Guess who gets to appear in today's chapter?**  
 **LOKI! *more confetti throwing***

 **But in all seriousness now. I put in lots of thought into Loki's psyche in the first movie, I put to use all my psychology classes and tried my very hardest to understand what made Loki, well, Loki.**  
 **I hope I didn't disappoint.**

* * *

Asgard was in upheaval, the people knew something bad had happened, even though they weren't sure what had, the bright lights coming from the Bifrost were enough indicative. Around the people of Asgard ran the guards. They had all been ordered to be prepared in case something went wrong with the rescue mission. Not all of them knew how it had come to be, but apparently the crown prince, Thor, had somehow landed himself in Jotunheim along with his brother and needed to be rescued by Odin himself.

At the Bifrost Heimdall watched with sad, solemn eyes as Odin raged at his eldest. It was true that what Thor had done was serious and foolish, but he was still a child.

Loki watched on in horror as his father banished Thor to Midgard for a month to live as a human. What was his father thinking? Thor as a human could possibly get killed at that backwater planet! His brother was far too young to be thrust into a situation like that and come out unharmed – not that he would be able to do any better, he was even younger and smaller than Thor.

As Thor was thrown into the Bifrost Odin summoned Mjolnir and gave it the command to only let itself be wielded by those who were worthy. He was fairly certain that Thor would not have become worthy by the end of his month as a human on Midgard, he was simply too stubborn. Odin was still having trouble believing his eldest thought it was a good idea to go seek a challenge with a Jotun warrior of all things. And dragging his little brother Loki along on top of all! Loki was still a very small child and could barely defend himself properly against any sort of attack, Odin would have punished Thor much more heavily if his little expedition had caused harm to his little brother.

By the time Mjolnir flew after Thor towards Midgard Loki felt like his entire world had been thrown upside down – even if-. No. He wasn't going to think about it. He couldn't. Not right now at least. Swallowing down some of the dread he felt Loki drew himself up straight and went to seek out his mother, who no doubt would be crying about Thor's fate and would probably appreciate having Loki at her side.

It wasn't easy pretending to be fine in front of his mother, but he couldn't afford to look like anything else had happened like-. No. No, no, he wasn't going to think about that.

Except.

Except he couldn't stop thinking about what had happened when he had been at Jotunheim with Thor, while his brother had been distracted fighting monsters several times his size and Loki had barely had any idea how to defend himself against a race that was impervious to his daggers.

It troubled him. Day and night. It troubled him all the time. He couldn't eat without thinking about it, he couldn't walk without thinking about it, he couldn't look at Odin or Frigga without thinking about it. He couldn't even sleep because it was all he was able to think about.

After almost three days he finally managed to summon enough bravery and went down to Odin's Vault.

The truth was too much for him to bear.

His world crushed down on him and everything, _everything, EVERYTHING_ changed.

And then his father – No! He was no longer his father, he never had been! He was Odin! Odin! – Odin was there and he was trying to placate him, but Loki had always been sharp with his words, he may be a child but he knew how to express himself fully. And express himself he did. He made sure that all his hurt, pain, _agony_ stung Odin as sharply as it possibly could.

And then Odin fell and Loki was left gaping at him.

 _What had he done?!_

He screamed for help as he felt around for any sign that Odin was still alive, that he hadn't died – _that he hadn't killed him_ – that this wasn't his fault – _please let this not be his fault_ – what would Frigga say? And why was she Frigga now? Why had she to be Frigga? He didn't want Frigga, he wanted _his mother_!

But Frigga wasn't his mother, was she?

His heart - what was left of it – was bleeding and broken without a way to ever restore it as he watched the crown, the same one he had envied Thor so much for because he was so sure he would be the one to receive it, come down and be placed on his head.

Later, that same day, he had gone to his chambers, laid the crown down with utmost care and went to lie on his bed. Then he cried himself hoarse throughout the night.

By the next day, barely any time having passed since he became the new king of Asgard, the Warriors Three and Sif were pestering him about letting Thor come back early and reprise his rightful place as the true king of Asgard.

On the one side, Loki could agree with them. Thor was the eldest and it was his rightful place to be the next king of Asgard.

On the other side, the mere idea of _Thor_ , the same one who had nearly caused war to break out between Jotunheim and Asgard after hundreds of years of peace between the two races because he wanted to challenge one of their warriors to a fight was-. NO. _NO. **NO. NO.**_

It was such a bad idea Loki nearly broke his stoic façade he had been keeping up the last couple days to keep Frigga calm so she could look after Odin and not be too worried about himself.

So he told them as such.

They didn't say it out loud, but they could just as well had – they thought he was usurping the throne.

Well, they could think whatever the hell they wanted, he had never cared for them that much. They were all grownups and only ever seemed to like spending time with Thor, who was too blind and stupid to realize when people were getting tired of him and insulting him with clever words. Not that the Warriors Three knew anything about insulting with clever words, but Loki knew they would make fun of little Thor the princeling behind his back. Nothing too malicious, or he would have reported it to Frigga, but it still sat wrongly with Loki.

And then they did it.

The Warriors Three and that blasted Sif went against everything he had ordered them and common sense to go get Thor back from Midgard. Loki was angered enough that he went down to the Vault where he set the Destroyer on them. He longed to never see them again.

* * *

Jane seemed to be the only one being entertained by all the jabbering Dr. S – aka, Dr. Selvig – was doing about bridges and Einstein and some other dude. Darcy was just bored out of her freaking mind, like any other respectable 11 year old should be. Jane didn't count, and even though she was the same age as Darcy she was – um – special. Yeah. Jane was special. As in, crazy smart. She was not only following what Dr. S was jabbering on about, but contributing to the conversation in meaningful ways.

Darcy was just about to call quits on the pair of nerds and finally succumb to sleep while cuddling Kitty – her large kitten plushie she had brought with her all the way from England – when the sky became all colorful and they were suddenly driving towards some sort of tornado, storm, whatever thingy.

Jane was already gushing about how exciting all this was and Dr. S was talking about how happy Jane's dad was going to be when he heard about all the progress they'd done on his work while he was gone on his two week trip to heck knows where.

They were in the middle of the storm soon enough, and while Darcy was praying for her dear life in the back seat, they hit something. Jane was immediately screaming about a boy and Dr. S was jumping out of the car, flashlight in hand, frenetically searching for whatever – or whoever – they had hit. Darcy was quick to follow, her beloved tazer in hand in case it was somebody crazy.

She followed the noise to where Jane and Dr. S were inspecting a small form lying on the ground. Jane was shouting at Dr. S to check if he was alive and Dr. S seemed like he was doing just that. Upon closer inspection of the form Darcy could confirm that the small form was indeed a boy, roughly the same age as she and Jane, maybe a little older. Twelve? Maybe?

Then the boy snapped open his eyes and sprang up and began shouting at the sky. It was all pretty unnerving for Darcy and when the boy rounded upon Dr. S and looked like he was ready to attack him – and 12 or not, Darcy just had this sort of feeling that the boy could be capable of inflicting some great damage if left unchecked – so Darcy did the most reasonable thing she could think of. She tazed him. Jane was angry with her the whole trip to the hospital, looking at her with her glare-y eyes. Darcy had to bite her lips to stop herself from laughing at her friend's expression.

When they find out the next day that their little stranger had somehow managed to break out of the hospital's security Darcy wasn't really surprised at all, she was just a little upset that they'll now have to spend the whole day looking for him all around the town and its outskirts.

They find him after Dr. S somehow managed to drive into him again, right at the hospital's parking lot.

The boy – Thor, he tells them he's called – doesn't even seem fazed from being hit by the same car in less than 24 hours, instead he's all fine with it. He's so weird. He only became more and more weird with every passing moment. He talked weirdly, was too well mannered for any 12 year old Darcy had ever met – yet he lacked some crucial manners as he later demonstrated when they ate at the café – he talked of being from some weird place and-. Yeah, Darcy decided to tune him out after he began talking of going to some place out of town where something had fallen out of the sky. Jane was the only one that looked like she was buying all he was saying. Dr. S didn't look too impressed and had already taken them both aside to tell them in a gentle tone that Thor was cray cray and they shouldn't pay too much thought to what he was saying.

Dr. S left them alone with Thor for a while as he went to talk to the local authorities about the search that had begun to find Thor's parents – he didn't react well when Thor told them that his father had banished him from his home as a punishment – and it was no secret for both Jane and Darcy that when they find Thor's parents they were probably going to go to jail. Thor though, seems oblivious to the whole thing. Neither Jane nor Darcy felt up to it to shatter his illusions.

When Dr. S came back he took them both aside and told them that he'd talked with the police and they'd allow him to take care of Thor until a social worker could find his or her way to the town. From what Darcy understood this could take up to a week.

So they took Thor to their home, even as he continued to insist on going to the site where the satellite fell. Dr. S eventually got tired of this and agreed to taking him there the next day if all went well. But when they arrive at their home they find government people all over the place and taking away all Dr. S and Jane's dad's research. Jane was the one who got the angriest out of all of them, shouting stuff about how her dad worked for the government as well, but nobody minded her and in the end they took away everything. Dr. S and Jane were pretty sullen afterwards as they had dinner and sulked around before showing Thor a place where he could sleep and going off to bed themselves.

The next day they tried to distract Thor for as long as they could by introducing him to all the kinds of board games they had – apparently he had never even so much as heard of all of them – and they were doing fine until after lunch when he demanded they let him out of the house so he could go find a horse and go himself. Dr. S just gave a longsuffering sigh and told Thor that they would take him. Jane was secretly all for it, cause she was becoming stir crazy after being left without an action to take after the government goons took away her dad's stuff. Darcy was just happy they all got something to do that would make them stop sulking.

The ride there was long, it was all dark by the time they got there and found the government all over the place. Jane was immediately hissing curses at them that she shouldn't know. Dr. S decided then that it was the proper place to scold Jane for her language and teach her about good values. Nobody noticed when Thor snuck away to infiltrate the government tent base, but Darcy was the first one to notice his absence.

Dr. S was not impressed by Thor at all. He was still fuming as he went back to their truck and got all the paperwork the police gave him to show that he was Thor's temporary guardian and then proceeded to stomp his way down to the tent base.

When he came back with a weepy Thor in one of his arms he seemed to have forgiven Thor whatever pains he might have caused him. As they drove home Darcy overheard Dr. S telling Jane in hushed tones that apparently Thor had thought that if he could get to whatever was at the tent base he would be able to lift his banishment and get back to his home. It really broke all of their hearts.

Thor seemed to slowly come to accept that maybe his parents wouldn't be coming back for him, though he also seemed to believe that they – or more specifically, his father – would be letting him come back to his home in a month. Dr. S didn't seem too impressed by this idea either.

Thor ended up staying with them about a whole week. In this time they would try to teach him about the basic of things, like almost anything electrical. It was almost comic how he didn't seem to know about anything. Dr. S called it tragic. Thor would also tell them about all his 'adventures' on Asgard and all other realms and often also talk about his little brother who he said was just under Jane's size. Darcy figured this meant he was about 10 years old or so.

Then, one day, as Thor was finally making his first toast ever without making a mess, four strange people came knocking on their glass door.

Darcy was still having problems understanding what was happening when they were suddenly being attacked by some giant robot. The town was in disarray as it evacuated and Dr. S had tried to usher them away, but Jane had set her foot down that she was going to stay since Thor was adamant he was also going to stay.

Thor's weird friends then began fighting the robot and Darcy experienced a new type of fear as she watched the robot tear through them as if they weren't the best warriors of Asgard – and she couldn't really deny it, cause she saw how they attacked that thing, they truly were as awesome as Thor had made them out to be.

And then it was only Darcy, Jane, Dr. S and Thor left over. He shouted at them to take cover and, armed with only a kitchen knife, he charged at the thing. Jane was screaming and Darcy was too stunned to do anything more than gape as the robot swatted Thor away as if he was nothing.

Then it began advancing towards them.

Thor began twitched, began moving and tried to get up, but couldn't, his body too battered to give more fight. So he began screaming, shouting at the thing to leave them alone, to take him instead. His desperate shouting broke Darcy's heart right then and there. There were tears running down the boy's face, mixing with blood as he pleaded for their lives.

Then, as Darcy was sure everything was over, the brightest flash of light she had ever seen came from the sky and there was thunder and lighting and then there was Thor, standing and holding a hammer. Lighting was falling all over the place and with one jump and strike the robot was destroyed.

It was all over so quickly that Darcy had trouble believing what she had seen, but there was Thor, clad in bright armor. Gone was the blood and tears that had been all over his face, gone were his tattered clothes that had broken when he fell under the robot's hand, gone was Thor, their normal, but slightly weird friend. This was Thor from Asgard, the mythical ruler of thunder and lightning.

The warrior friends of Thor soon regained consciousness and pleaded with him to go back to Asgard where he was dearly needed. Thor looked at them, his eyes sad. Darcy could see in his eyes that he didn't want to leave them. There was some of that desperation that he had shown previously when pleading for their lives still present in them. But then he glanced back at his warrior friends and Darcy saw his jaw harden.

He pleaded for them to forgive him and told them he'd be back as soon as he could. They followed him to the outskirts of the town where he wanted to take off and the leftover of the government goons that had tried to stop the robot were gathered. Their leader tried to stop Thor but his warrior friends would have none of it and Thor was adamant he had to go back to his home – a bit like E.T. when Darcy thought about it later. And then, in another bright flash of light, Thor and his warrior friends were gone – just like in E. T.

* * *

It was all over. Everything Loki had been working for was falling down around him. The Warriors Three and Sif were on their way back to Asgard with Thor. They would see it all burn under their feet, Loki was sure of it. It was the end of the entire kingdom as it was known.

And it was all those idiot's fault.

As Loki stalked the halls of the palace he became increasingly agitated, he could barely fathom the idea of Thor taking over the throne. His mind became plagued with all that would go wrong if his brother was to become king. It all became just too much for him as he finally decided that he was to be the one to set an end to all of it before it even began.

The Warriors Three and Sif had barely had the opportunity to exit the Bifrost along with Thor before Loki was there and striking them down. Cursed Heimdall immediately jumped to their aid and stopped Loki before he could do any real form of damage. Thor was immediately upon him and asking for an explanation of what was happening.

At first Loki was still too mad with rage so he didn't hear him, but then as Thor bellowed how he didn't understand – and weren't they brothers? – did it all dawn on Loki. He saw his reflexion on the polished floors of the Bifrost and knew that this wasn't the fault of the Warriors Three, or Sif, or even Thor.

This was all Jotunheim's fault. So they would be the ones to pay.

With one mighty swat from Grungir he had Heimdall out of his way and he had the controls of the Bifrost at his disposal. He made quick work of his plan and almost immediately he had the whole force of the Bifrost hitting Jotunheim with no way whatsoever to stop it.

He was still laughing brokenly with joy at what he'd done when Thor wrenched him out of the Bifrost and tried to force him to explain what in the name of everything whatsoever holy and precious had caused his madness.

Loki was still half in hysterics as he told Thor that he wasn't actually his brother.

The expression of total sorrow and heartbreak on Thor's face almost gave Loki pause, but then that same expression morphed into one of stubborn decisiveness that Loki knew so well. Thor stood up and began raising his hammer, ready to smash whatever was underneath it. Loki closed his eyes tightly, believing Thor was about to strike him down now that he knew they weren't actually brothers, but then, lo and behold, he was wrong. How often can one be wrong in such a short lifespan?

Thor hadn't raised his hammer to strike Loki down, he'd raised it to break the bridge to the Bifrost. Loki, madness still having a hold on him, tried to stop Thor, using his human friends as excuses. If anything it only hardened Thor's resolve.

When the Bifrost fell Loki saw in it not only his plans, but all his life falling down into the abyss. He didn't put up any protest when he felt himself falling along with the Bifrost, so he was surprised when he looked up and saw Thor holding onto him and Odin of all people holding Thor.

Seeing Odin's face of disappointment was too much for Loki. He tried to tell his father that he could have done it, but then Odin broke even that illusion.

It was all too much, so he let go.

* * *

 ***sniffs* Damn, Loki always makes my heart ache :(**


	5. CAPTAIN AMERICA

**Here you go, enjoy angsty little Steve, I tried to do my best with him**

* * *

Life was pretty cruel to people. Especially if you were a little sick boy. Or so Steve found himself thinking on more than one occasion. He tried though, to not think like that. He always tried to think like Bucky, but Bucky wasn't 12 and looking 10 or 9 and with more sicknesses than he could count with both hands.

Sometimes Steve resented Bucky after he had managed to sign up for the army, but then he remembered all the circumstances that had led him to it. It wasn't as if he had been conscripted or anything – he was 13 for gosh's sake! – but it was the easiest way he had found to earn the money that they needed. They were both basically orphans – Bucky's parents were too poor to even feed themselves so Bucky had figured they were all better off if he left them and Steve's mom had died a couple years ago – and they had rent to pay, food to buy and multiple other expenses. The biggest one of them all being Steve's medicine and constant need for care.

Bucky had first tried to enlist the legal way and gotten himself laughed out of the enlistment office when they saw his age, but then he got his papers fixed so they said '15' instead of their true '13'. He'd lied to the officer and told him he was short for his age and got accepted right away. He was in perfect health condition and they needed all the men that they could get.

Steve had already tried the same route and got denied so many times he was about to give up. But Steve was never one to give up, mostly because he feared that if he did he would end up succumbing to all his sicknesses and simply dying. The mere idea of dying at age 12 from all his sicknesses was so terrifying that it kept Steve trying just one more time, it could only eventually work, right?

It was at the Stark Expo, on the last day Bucky would still be around before he was shipped off – he had decided to invite Steve along for the show as a treat – when Steve was trying for the nth time that he met Dr. Erkskine and instead of being laughed out of the enlistment office he was instead accepted.

It wasn't easy, not at all when he got to the camp. They mostly laughed at him, but he was stubborn enough to simply go on. Dr. Erkskine would sometimes come around and talk to Colonel Phillips – who would scowl the whole time – and to Agent Carter – who would actually break her poker face and look a bit disturbed at what was being discussed. Steve often wondered what it was they were talking about, but was resigned to simply training and hoping for the best.

Then, one day, he was picked by Dr. Erkskine to be the first volunteer in his experimental procedure. Steve was all excited by it, but Agent Carter seemed to question his excitement and asked him several times on the drive over to Dr. Erkskine's lab if he was sure he actually wanted to be part of this and it was never too late to back and that nobody would think bad of him to simply walk away. She was wrong though, Steve would never forgive himself if he backed out or walked away.

The procedure itself was the most painful thing he had ever experienced in his whole life, but the end result was well worth it. Instead of looking like he was 9 bordering on 10 he now looked like he could pass of like a 14 year old or older, he was even probably taller than Bucky!

All the excitement quickly died though, when Dr. Erkskine died and his assassin killed himself when Steve chased all through New York and caught him.

His blood was taken and when he asked about going to the war they laughed him off. Suddenly he was painfully aware that these people knew his true age and had total control over him and that none of them seemed to be too overly interested in what he wanted.

They eventually settled on turning him into a performing monkey and had him touring all through the country as Captain America. It was all very patriotic and probably better than doing nothing, but it was a long shot from what Steve had wanted. When he arrived in Europe to continue the tour he found himself being laughed at yet again, this time not only for his size – even with the serum he still looked like a kid – but also for the tour itself. Nobody was interested in little Captian America or what he had to say.

It was all pretty bad, but when he heard about Bucky's unit being missing and most likely dead, it all went from 'pretty bad' to decidedly awful. He decided then and there that he had had enough of sitting by idly and if Colonel Phillips wanted to he could court martial him if he so wanted, but he was going to go find Bucky even if it cost him his life.

Surprisingly Peggy came out of nowhere and offered him help. At first he wondered if he should decline, but at the end he decided that he really needed all help that he could get.

The base where they were holding Bucky was one of the most dreadful places he had ever been in, but he had not been asleep during his training and he knew how to use a gun. He bashed down all cell doors and when he found Bucky – and briefly panicking as he wondered if his best friend was still alive – he broke the manacles that were holding him and carried him out of the terrible room he had been in. As he carried him Steve ruefully noted that Bucky was indeed still the taller of the two, he had probably even grown since he had arrived in Europe, but Steve's estimates were more than a little off in his new, taller body.

It was then that he encountered Schmidt for the first time. Their face-off lasted for only a few minutes and Bucky was pretty insistent they get out as soon as they could. On the return to base Steve was too overjoyed to be reunited with Bucky to notice the odd looks some of Bucky's unit members were throwing his best friend, but since nobody commented, it was all forgotten about eventually.

What surprised Steve most when they returned to base was that Colonel Philips didn't demand his head on a spike and that he was actually allowed to stay afterwards and no longer needed to go back on the tour.

That night Steve slept the best he ever had in his life.

Soon, the Howling Commandoes were formed and they were raiding all the HYDRA bases to the ground, often missing Schmidt and Zola by mere minutes. All these missions took up approximately more than a year before they were finally are able to form a plan to catch Zola. Steve was 14 by then and could easily pass of as a 16 or 17 year old, but the roundness in his face often prevented this. Bucky was then also 15 and looking like he could be a couple years older than he was, still being taller than Steve. Both of them were pretty lanky and tall, Dr. Erkstein had predicted Steve would grow into someone more bulky when he finished growing into his proper height, Steve could only hope that he would be taller than Bucky by then.

It was all supposed to be just another mission. Sure, a little more difficult than the previous ones, but nothing out of this world. They were all supposed to come walking out of it.

Bucky wasn't supposed to die.

Steve couldn't get over the fact that Bucky had been just inches away from his hand before he fell. He replayed the event over and over in his head and every time, without fault, he would still see it all as his fault. His fault that he hadn't been able to grab Bucky's hand that last second, his fault that Bucky had found himself in that situation in the first place. How could he have been so careless? How could he have let Bucky die?!

But no matter how much he cried silently when he was alone in his tent, or how much he despaired on the inside each day, nothing would change in the end. Bucky was dead and Steve was going to destroy HYDRA until there was nothing left of them.

So he did exactly that.

When they raided the main base of HYDRA it was supposed to be the last one of them all, his mission was almost over. Encountering Schmidt one last time was all Steve needed to remind him of all the reasons why he was doing what he was doing. Soon he was fighting Schmidt hand to hand on an airplane, the Tesseract long gone through the floor, in a fight over the control of said plane. When Schmidt was finally taken care of Steve had the opportunity to study the situation and realize that there was no way out of that situation without dying, not if he wanted to save thousands of lives.

Peggy managed to get in contact with him and at the last moment asked him to come back to them, to home. It startled Steve to think that he no longer had a home, not really. He simply told Peggy to tell everybody that they had been great friends and he wouldn't have asked for better people to spend a war with.

It was with a resigned heart that Steve crashed the plane into the snow, knowing that he was going to reunite with all the people he had lost throughout his short life.

* * *

 **Very short chapter, its all just building up to what's going to happen in the chapter after this one. Though there is actually a lot going on in the background, one day I might even write all the stuff that happened here in like a one-shot or something.**


	6. AVENGERS

**Finally! This is the chapter I wanted to right since the moment I began with this series and now I'm finally able to share it with you guys :D**  
 **This is where the story officially comes to life, the moment these teens meet each other is the moment this story caught life for me.**  
 **Hope you enjoy it**

* * *

"It's beautiful isn't it J?", asked Tony as he observed his brand new tower light up after connecting it to its new energy source.

"It certainly is, Sir", JARVIS answered.

"Take a picture and send it to Pep and Rhodey, we're still not done trying to convince them to move here", said Tony as he began to land on the tower's landing area.

"Right away Sir."

Tony sighed as he stepped into his new living room. The tower was perfect, the new environment was perfect, everything was fine, except for the fact that there wasn't anybody beside himself and JARVIS in the Tower. It wasn't ideally what he would have wanted, but he had grown so tired of LA and the way Pepper's dad would barely meet his eyes whenever he went to visit – same with Pepper's mom, she wasn't too happy with their friendship either. Ever since he'd become Iron Man – or Iron Lad as some of the news channels liked to call him – it had become increasingly difficult to just have a simple life. The events that happened while he had thought that he was going to die didn't really help his case at all.

Oh well, he was going to make himself a new, better life here at NY whatever it cost him.

"Hey J, prepare some drinks, I feel like I'm going to have a long night tonight!", he called to the ceiling.

"Chocolate caramel milkshake as always, Sir?"

"Yessss", Tony said happily and plopped himself on one of the sofas, "Also, get me the stats of the company."

"Stock value went up again today. Your newest invention is being a huge success in the market, Sir."

Tony grinned, "Of course it is, I'm the best."

"Still feeling the need to praise yourself Stark? You really do have a big ego."

Tony did not then scream like a girl. He was going to deny it till the grave.

"What the fuck are you doing here, Natalia, Natanata, Nat-whatever?!"

"Natanata?", Natasha raised an eyebrow at him.

"Whatever your name is today, so yeah, my guess is as good as any. Also, I have a heart condition for fuck's sake! Couldn't you have knocked? How did you even get in here?!"

"I'm sorry Sir, she overrode my codes and asked me not to tell you she was coming up."

Tony looked up at the ceiling in betrayal.

"Before you start accusing your AI of treason or some other type of nonsense, let me tell you I'm here on serious business", said Natasha.

Sighing dramatically Tony decided to let JARVIS off the hook – for now – and gestured at Natasha to sit down – she didn't budge, "What is it? I really can't imagine a reason for you to come here unless", he stood up and straightened his back, "Unless SHIELD has ordered you to get rid of me?"

Natasha rolled her eyes, "No, though this does have to do with SHIELD."

"What happened?", asked Tony curiously, walking around his giant sofa to go stand by Natasha.

She looked hesitant for a moment before she closed her eyes and opened them again, seemingly having sought inner resolve and found it, "This morning in the early hours there was an alien infiltration at SHIELD."

"Alien as in-"

"From outer space. It's not the first time we've had contact with this race in particular, but that's beside the point-"

"Wait, you're telling me aliens exist and that they're beside the fucking point?!", exclaimed Tony incredulously.

"Yes, now listen carefully, next comes the tricky part-"

" _Wha-_ "

"The alien that came through a portal of sorts began brainwashing SHIELD staff", she paused for a moment, "One of the people he took with him is my friend. I – I owe him my life."

Tony stared at her for a long moment, "And you want me to help you do what – defeat that alien?"

Natasha got a memory stick out of her jacket pocket and handed it to Tony, "Director Fury has this pet project he's been keeping under wraps called the Avengers Initiative, he's only talked to one person that I know of about this."

Tony eyed the drive as he took it from Natasha's hand, "And that person just happened to be you?"

She made a noise that sounded very much like a snort, "No, I just overheard them. I'm a spy, remember? The reason why Fury hasn't told anybody about this is because all the candidates for the Initiative are still minors, so he's decided to wait a few years until it's legal to form a team of them."

Tony had by now plugged in the drive and had JARVIS expand all the information around the glass windows.

"Oh boy."

"You see that? That's the alien's brother that came to earth about a year ago. Wrecked a whole town."

Tony swallowed hard as he saw the footage, "Okay", he said and swapped to see the next files and found himself looking at the files of all the Avengers candidates, "Wait, wait, the Hulk is actually a kid?!"

Natasha nodded, "I don't know the whole story, but from what I've heard is that Banner's father was trying to replicate the super soldier serum and when he died Banner tried to replicate it at his foster father's lab. It sorta blew up in his face."

"He was freaking 8 when that happened!"

"He's a genius, figure you'll make good friends", Natasha said with a shrug, "He's 11 now, you're almost the same age now."

"Excuse you, I'm 13, thank you very much", Tony huffed and saw Natasha from the corner of his eye stifle a chuckle at him.

Ignoring her Tony looked through several more files, "Wait, when did you people unearth Captain freaking America?!"

"A few months ago. He prefers to be called Steve though and", She paused for the dramatic effect, "I know which gym he frequents here in New York."

Tony turned to look at her and grinned, "You have all this planned out, don't you?"

She shrugged, "Up to a point, I'm afraid I can only do so much by myself though."

He nodded in understanding, looked back at all the files that Natasha had dumped on him and took a deep breath, "Okay, give me a few hours and I'll be up to date with all of this and we can get started off."

Natasha grinned.

Tony decided in the end to cut some of his reading short and leave what was left for the flight from NY to India. It was a fairly big load of information and even he was having trouble understanding everything that had gone wrong to create the Hulk.

When they landed in India Natasha suggested a plan to lure the Hulk out to the outskirts of the city, Tony though, had completely different plans.

"You're going to get us both killed", she hissed at him as they made their way up the dingy building to where there was rumored to live a genius little doctor. Apparently most people simply thought he was a misshapen little man that had had growth problems since he hid his face from the world most of the time with a tunic.

"Just follow my lead", Tony whispered back at her and draped his arm around her shoulder – a difficult task, seeing as Natasha was quite a bit taller than him – the other arm curling protectively around his belly.

As they approached the clinic Tony began moaning and making increasingly distressed faces.

"Hullo? Anybody here? I need a doctor! Please!", he half swooned as he said the last part. Natasha looked like she was bursting something in her effort not to roll her eyes at him.

They were quickly approached by a small figure with his face partially covered with a shawl, "Where does it hurt?", it sounded like an older person's raspy voice, tinged with the accent of somebody that knew how to speak multiple languages and had allowed all of them to influence him. If Tony hadn't known he would have thought it was simply a little man, but now that he knew he could easily distinguish the raspy voice as that of a child trying to cover up for the fact that he hadn't gone through puberty yet.

"My belly!", he wailed, "My sister", he gestured at Natasha, who really was going to kill him by the looks of it, "She poisoned me!"

This time Natasha did actually roll her eyes, "Don't mind his dramatics, but if you could help his tummy pain it would help a lot."

"Ah, yes, I think I might have something here. Please sit while I go looking", he left and Tony took the opportunity to grin at Natasha, letting her go and going after Banner.

Banner looked startled when he saw Tony had followed him to the back of his dingy apartment-office-place-whatever-this-was.

Tony immediately held up his hands in an attempted sign at peacefulness, "Okay, sorry I lied but I need to talk to you in private."

Banner looked at him questioningly, "I don't understand, I'm nobody special-"

Tony snorted, "Puh-lease, you and I both know you're probably one of the smartest kids in this world, I mean, after myself of course, but that doesn't make you any less awesome", he held out his hand, "Name's Tony Stark, you can ditch that awful thing on your face, I know you're Bruce Banner."

The boy looked hesitant for a moment before he took off the horrible cloth that covered his face and revealed a young face of slightly-too-thin 11 year old boy.

"Why are you here?", he asked.

"Okay, this is a long story, can I sit down? Imma gonna sit down here", he sat down and took out his tablet and expanded it, "Come on, don't be shy, come sit by my side while I bring you up to date with what has been happening in the world."

Banner – Nah, he was Bruce now, you can't call a kid like him Banner – Bruce was looking terribly nervous as he sat down at Tony's side.

"So, to start off, did you know they finally discovered that aliens do indeed exist?"

Bruce's eyes widened with awe and Tony instantly knew they were on their way to becoming best friends.

Natasha had to come retrieve them eventually when they had been talking for well over an hour. In this time period Tony had not only managed to convince Bruce to come help them save the world – as Bruce the child genius, not the Hulk – but also began packing his meager possessions into a meager suitcase while Bruce immersed himself in all the stuff that Tony had from the drive Natasha had given him.

On the flight to NY their friendship was solidified as they talked science and geeked out over all the fun times they were going to have in Tony's lab looking for the Tesseract. Natasha would occasionally just glance at them with an expression of fond exasperation.

When they arrived at NY Natasha proposed that they hit their next target. Bruce was okay with coming along to meet the famous Captain America – who was physically just a year older than Tony, who would have thought? – Natasha, though, insisted they approach the Captain her way this time. Tony had been too engrossed over a discussion about the properties of Gamma rays when Natasha said this so he didn't offer much protest.

The gym was in the older parts of Brooklyn and looked nothing like what Tony expected from a gym of this day and age. Natasha left the van that had brought them thus far and entered the gym, leaving Tony and Bruce with the strict instructions to not leave the van.

Tony had been about the protest, but then Bruce made a remark about the architectural design of his precious tower and the next thing Tony noticed was that there was a blond lanky teen climbing into their van.

"Um", the blond stopped as he was halfway in and looked nervously from Tony to Bruce.

"Get in already Steve", came Natasha's gripe from behind.

The blond – who probably was Captain America when Tony thought about it – settled in awkwardly and scooted to make place for Natasha to get in as well.

When they were all settled into the van an awkward silence fell.

"Tony", Natasha began, all of the sudden, "Why don't you introduce yourself to Steve here", she turned to face Bruce, "You too Bruce."

Tony wasn't one to look a gift horse in the mouth, "I'm Tony Stark, as you probably know already, this here his Brucie Bruce, AKA the Hulk, AKA Bruce Banner, AKA Bruce the child genius Banner, that there is Natasha, AKA Nat-Nat-"

"Okay, that's enough", Natasha interrupted his wonderful introduction. Bruce was looking slightly mortified and Captain America was looking confused.

Natasha threw Tony a glare that was obviously meant to silence him and then turned to face Steve, "We are having a situation. The whole planet is having a situation and we could all use your help", she produced a folder from fuck knew where and handed it to Steve, "It would help us if you could tell us how much you know about the Tesseract."

Steve looked pretty horrified when he saw the Tesseract's photo in the file and he only became paler the more he read. Tony could relate a little to what he was probably feeling, sacrificing your life to get rid of the results of one thing and then coming back to life only to discover that the same thing you tried to destroy back then has come back to haunt you.

"It was better off in the middle of the ocean", Steve said sternly after a few moments of reading, "Why hasn't SHIELD called me in to help deal with this?"

"You're a minor, as well as all of us", drawled Tony, checking his nails as he discreetly tried to see Steve's face. There was a strange expression on his face, one that Tony wasn't really able to read. All that he could surmise about it was that it was sad and maybe a little resigned.

"Yet we clearly are the best bet the planet currently has, I mean, look at the team we have right here! Super spy, super genius, billionaire, philanthropist and another super genius with a tendency to wreck stuff – and then you, of course", Tony grinned at Steve.

Steve stared at him for a moment, then back at the folder in his hands and when he looked up again he nodded, "I'm in."

Tony whooped and since he was small enough his arms didn't even hit the ceiling of the van, "Excellent, my tower is just around the corner, the labs are already running a search – though I think it might need to be recalibrated – we also have tabs on SHIELD in case they find something and get themselves in over their heads and need help."

Steve didn't look like he approved too much of that last part if his frown was anything to go by. Natasha quickly intervened and before much could be complained about they were at the tower and discussion had renewed between Bruce and Tony.

They hadn't been long at the tower when JARVIS announced that Loki had been found in Germany. Tony still had a prototype of some type of jet at his disposal so they all piled into it and took off at top speed towards Germany. Bruce had protested that he didn't want to go along, but had gotten dragged along anyways.

When they neared the area Loki had been sighted at Tony flew out of the jet in order to get there first. What he found there was decidedly more than what he had bargained for. Standing in front of a crowd of kneeling people in the middle of the streets of the city was Loki. He was clad in fancy green weird clothes and a goat-y helmet, but this wasn't what unsettled Tony. It was the way Loki's hands and arms were covered in blood up unto his elbows, the way his bloody fingers were twitching and the way he was simply looking like parts of his body were jerking at odd intervals.

Fortunately Captain America arrived soon after so that they could be creeped out together by Loki. They had a brief fight as they subdued Loki and no matter how much Tony concentrated on the image of Loki threatening a crowd of kneeling people, he still felt like a bully for blasting the little boy across the streets.

Steve quickly cuffed him and even sooner than that they had him on their plane with plans to take him back to the tower until all was over and they could transfer him to the authorities. Neither Steve nor Bruce were fans of this idea, Steve because – as Tony was learning – he was a pompous ass, and Bruce because he simply felt deeply uncomfortable while near Loki.

The flight went mostly in peace, Bruce had taken the passenger seat to be up front with Natasha and as far away as was possible from Loki while Steve and Tony watched Loki in the back of the jet. Sure, Natasha got several calls from SHIELD, but she was adamant on getting her friend back, so there were no worries about her giving them over to SHIELD.

Then, of course, the mythical ruler of thunder and lightning had to come and wreak havoc on everything and take Loki away. His first prisoner ever and Tony had managed to lose him within the hour of obtaining him. Tony was sure he was breaking some new kind of record.

He didn't waste any time in going after Thor and teach him a lesson. The little thief even had the nerve of being taller than Tony, looking like he could almost be Steve's age, the bastard. Their fight started off greatly, he used sass and got charged up to maximum and beyond and then, just when their fight was about to reach epic proportions Steve had to come and break it up. Stupid Steve and his stupid shield.

Stupid Natasha too – not that he would ever say that part out aloud – who went and answered SHIELD's calls and stroke a deal with them while Tony was fighting Thor. To be honest he had been pretty incensed when he found this out, which made the already tense ride even tenser. It became bearable though, when he saw the Helicarrier for the first time. It was such a beautiful work of art that Tony calmed down instantly when he saw it for the first time. And then, even better, he could walk around inside of it and annoy Fury in person just as much as he wanted to.

It was obvious that Fury didn't want to have them there, but didn't have much of an option after Tony told him that he and Bruce had already started to run the searching program and would have the results of the Tesseract's whereabouts sooner than any of their own scientists would have it. So they settled them in a fancy new lab, gave Natasha a stern talking to and left Steve mostly to himself, since there was still some amount of respect going about for Captain America.

All in all it seemed to be going pretty boring, until Tony began cracking down on SHIELD, Fury got there and basically told them it was all Thor's fault and Steve was there and angry and oh fu-

It went to hell pretty quickly. One moment they were still staring at Bruce after his horrible – _how could something like that have happened to that sweet little boy?_ – confession and then they were all flying as an explosion rocked the Helicarrier around. Then they were running to fix the motor and fighting was going all around them and the Hulk was on the loose and fuck knew what was happening and – _it was hell_.

Cap and he had a brief moment of bonding over one of the broken motors of the Helicarrier. It was really special, he was mostly shouting at Cap to _pull that freaking lever already dammit_ , while Cap was apparently fighting for his life and almost fell to his death. It was all pretty intense.

And then the fight was over, a head count was held and they found out they were short Bruce, Thor and Loki. Also, Agent Agent, whom Pepper adored, was dead. It felt like a punch in the gut for Tony. Cap looked mostly confused until somebody told him it was the guy that made him his new costume and then suddenly Steve looked all sad and had a whole new appreciation for his suit.

The good news was though, that Natasha got her friend back. Apparently all he needed was to be hit in the head to free him from being brainwashed. As Steve went around and tried to assemble what was left of the Mini-Avengers – Tony had called them that once and had Natasha glared at him in a terrifying way – Tony got to see Natasha's friend for the first time. As odds would have it, he was also a boy, looking about Tony's age, just a little older. Also taller – _that motherfu_ -.

Tony was the first one out of all of them to fly back to New York – where they figured out the Tesseract was going to be – and then Tony had the dubious honor of finding Loki pacing his living room.

At first he was about to simply sass at the boy until he could no longer handle Tony or something, but then he saw how Loki was still twitching and remembered Thor's heartbroken expression as he listened to Loki rant madly in his cell about destruction and all such things. Tony looked once again into Loki's eyes and found a disturbing absence in them. True, he didn't exactly know how aliens worked, but he was quite sure that there had to at least be _something_ in their eyes, like there was with Thor's. Thor was brimming with emotions and felt no need to hide them for even so much as a second.

"Hey", he began gently as he walked slowly into the living room, but at seeing Loki's twitching intensify he knew he had to try keep it short, "Liking the place? I designed it you know – well, mostly. I hired an architect, but most of it was all my idea."

Instead of the normal reaction Tony normally got when he was being more of a narcissist than usual, like people getting annoyed, irritated or angry, Loki simply stared at him like he was talking some strange language – and Tony having already been subjected to part of Thor's speech about Allspeak aboard the Helicarrier knew this was not Loki's case.

Suddenly Loki looked out of the window agitatedly, "They're coming", he said, "It's almost their time."

Tony tried another route, "Why are you trying to take over Earth?", he asked, because subtlety has never been his forte.

Loki snapped his head towards Tony so fast it can only have hurt him, "It- its-", he stopped and looked out of the window again, "Do not question my motives human. I am here to free you. Liberty is nothing but a prison, true freedom is found under ruling."

Tony stared at him for a full minute, "Something's wrong with you", he didn't mean to say it out loudly, and by the look that Loki threw him afterwards it wasn't exactly his best plan. He was quickly right on top of Tony and tapping his spear on Tony's chest and that up close Tony noticed for the first time that there were bags under his eyes and he was paler than what's considered healthy.

Looking with new understanding at Loki it didn't even come to his mind to start mocking the child, since suddenly Tony had a whole new level of understanding of what was going through Loki's mind. The last time Tony had ever seen somebody looking as lost as him, with bags under his eyes and with skin several shades too pale to be healthy was when he had just escaped from those caves in Afghanistan.

He was halfway to start getting flashbacks of his time in the caves when Loki swatted him – his size truly did not give away the strength he had – and he went flying out of the window. Fortunately he had thought of putting on his bracelets before he began talking with Loki, otherwise he would have died in a terrible splat before the true fighting even began.

From there on things only got worse. Suddenly there was a portal open above in the sky and aliens were pouring out and wreaking destruction on the city below. Citizens were running all around the place in search for shelter and there were pieces of debris already falling down from some buildings, mostly glass, but still rather dangerous for anybody below.

The team arrived shortly after and began helping with the containment effort, Cap giving orders over the coms and Barton and Natasha crashing their jet. In short order Thor and Bruce came and joined the party – Tony was kind enough to take it right to where they were. It was a pretty long fight, but fortunately they all had coms so Tony was able to convey to Thor that his brother might need some recalibrating of his own. This seemed to give the blond alien new energy as he went right through big chunks of invading aliens to get to the tower where Loki had been the whole time.

Unfortunately the coms didn't convey whatever happened between the two of them then, but after a long stretch of fighting without any of them seeing Thor in the battle they heard his slightly crackly voice – Tony swore that voice was going to become a deep baritone once it fully broke and Thor got over puberty – that Loki had been possessed and that he was currently in Tony's tower in some sort of state of shock.

Barton didn't sound too enthusiastic about it, but the rest of team sounded a bit more open to the idea. They asked Thor to try find out how to close the portal and after a couple minutes they were rewarded with an answer. Natasha was there before anybody could start to think of who would be the best suited for the job and taking the spear up to where Selvig – or Dr. S, as Thor insisted on calling him – was still cackling madly to himself.

Right as things finally started looking up Fury called Tony and of course it was not only bad news, but terrible news. The portal closing had to be put on pause as he called in and alerted the team of a nuclear bomb headed right at them. There were a couple of very tense moments after Tony informed the team he knew just where to put the bomb.

The unending silence was broken by Cap as he said, "Good luck Tony", Tony felt pretty damn appreciative of Steve right then and decided the old man in a child's body wasn't as bad as he had thought.

As he was heading into the portal he wished he had somebody to call, like a parent or any other kind of family member and he didn't want to scare Pepper and he knew how upset Rhodey would be if he realized Tony was trying to give him a goodbye call, so in the end he didn't call anybody.

It was the single most terrifying experience Tony had ever had in his life.

He came back to consciousness with the help of the Hulk roaring at his side and Steve and Clint looming over him.

"Oh thank goodness", Steve breathed as he closed his eyes in what was obvious relief at seeing Tony alive. The Hulk gave another roar, this one of happiness though. Clint looked pretty relieved too. Thor was asking over the coms if Tony was okay and Natasha was ordering them to check his breathing.

For the first time in – well, let's just say a very long time – Tony felt appreciated.

He felt like nothing could break his mood as he was helped up by his new friends. Unfortunately there was.

When they got to the tower it was to find Loki curled up in ball and swaying back and forth as he muttered to himself and cried without stop. Thor had draped him up in blanket and had a hand on his back and looked like he didn't know if he could establish further physical contact. Judging from Loki's state he would have had to say 'no'.

Upon seeing Loki trembling and basically speaking nonsense to himself the team had to agree that something was definitely wrong with Loki, even Clint, who looked like he would rather not have to accept reality. It took them over an hour to calm Loki down enough for him to actually accept a glass of water and when he finally began drinking he was like a man that had been in the desert for weeks.

Tony googled for foods that would help people that hadn't eaten in a long time and then checked with all the remaining open restaurants in the area and whooped when he found out that the Shwarma restaurant that he had seen during the battle was not only still open, but also served some sort of exotic broth that they could give Loki.

Thor immediately busied himself with changing Loki into something more conspicuous and then they were off.

The restaurant was everything Tony had hoped for and more. They were extra considerate with Loki when they saw him – it was impossible not to, he looked like a precious cinnamon ball that had been malnourished and that needed love – and gave him a light broth that did him wonders in no time. The rest of the team ate like pigs all the food that they could shove into their mouths, except for Thor who stopped every now and then to check on Loki or to order another bowl for his little brother.

When it became late Tony invited them all to his tower and they all happily accepted. Thor accepted for Loki, who had fallen asleep at some time during their lunch – dinner? Whatever that had been – and then proceeded to carry Loki all the way back to the tower.

Tony checked the news as everybody settled in to sleep that night and found that the world was praising them as 'little heroes' and 'little saviors' and all other kinds of names, usually followed by words like 'little' or 'small'. Tony decided he was going to throw a press conference as soon as he could to set the world straight on their name.

They were the fucking Avengers, Earth's mightiest motherfucking heroes.


	7. INTERLUDE 1

**So these 'interludes' are where the story is supposed to come alive. Interludes will always be about the Avengers before or after shit has gone down. It will deal with their everyday life and how they bond. More often than not it'll cover silly little stories like this one, but I feel like it only brings to the heart of the story.**

* * *

"Lady and Gentlemen we are here united to today in the face of one of our greatest challenges yet", there was a dramatic pause, "We have faced an army of aliens, an army of savage lawyers-"

There came an accompanying hissing sound down the table.

"-armies of crazy fans, that crazy robot in downtown just yesterday, that dude dressed as a clown in Hong Kong last week, that weird lady in a leotard at-"

"Get on with it already, Tony!"

"Fine, but don't later come tell me that the team wasn't hyped enough for what we're planning to do!"

"Tony, you've literally been hyping us up for this for over a week. Daily. Sometimes several times a day!"

"I don't see the need of this hyping to be done. I am hyped all the time no matter the occasion."

"I don't think you get the meaning of the work hype, Thor."

"On the contrary, I think he gets it perfectly. He really is just hyped up all the time, I mean, have you seen him?"

There was a moment of silence as everybody turned to look.

"Okay, so maybe you might be right."

"Excuse you, maybe? Might be?"

"I'm just saying it as I see it."

"Listen here-"

"Come on guuuuyyss, we're getting all beside the point now! I still don't even know how big I need that arrow to be!"

"For the last time Tony, that is a terrible idea!"

"That's what you say now! But when y'all see it tomorrow-"

"You mean you've already made it?!"

"Of course I have, who are you taking me for?"

"For fuck's sake Tony, the one thing I tell you not to do-"

"Tony, please tell me you're joking."

"Why doesn't anybody here appreciate anything I do for the team?"

"Just-just, promise-", sigh, "promise us all that it won't hurt any of our plans for tomorrow."

"Steve!"

"This is better than the entertainment your puny television provides."

"Nobody asked for your opinion, Thor."

"Tony, if you ruin any of tomorrow's plans I will murder you in such a way they will never be able to find your body and if they ever do, they won't know it was you from what's left over!"

"Nat, please-okay, shutting up now. Tony, please, sit down and keep quiet. Nobody here actually wants you dead."

"You're talking like he understood the basics of self-preservation."

"Can we all just please go on our own way now and prepare as much as possible for tomorrow?"

"Yes! Please!"

The sound of quickly shuffling chairs filled the room followed by the skittering of feet.

* * *

Clint was tired. It had been a really long two day trip with the most inhospitable conditions one could think of. He actually didn't even need to go in reality, since he was no longer actually working for SHIELD, but Fury had called in favor – one of the many Clint still owed him – so he hadn't really had an alternative.

The mission was shit. It was in a remote village in the Congo that had recently been through some really tough times and didn't really offer even the most basic of commodities for any guest that might pass through. The guy that had to be stalked out and later apprehended by the strike team – that arrived on the hour of the actual action and left as soon as it was all over in their fancy jet – lived in a shit house and seemed to be all the way into crazy town if the way he was talking to the walls and floor of his house was anything to go by. The worst part was that the strike team didn't want to give him a lift back home on their fancy jet, citing protocol and other bullshit as their excuse.

It all resulted in him coming back to the Avengers tower when it was already dark outsight. Though not as late to warrant the whole main floor to be left in the dark as well. Or at least that was what he thought when he exited the elevator and looked around the living room only to see darkness. And here he had thought he could chat somebody up as he made himself a sandwich before venturing back to his own rooms.

Clint sighed as he set down his luggage, well, guess it was alone night for him then.

"SURPRISE!"

Suddenly the lights where back on and the team was there and Clint had his handgun in one hand and a knife in the other.

There was a tense moment before he relaxed and lowered his weapons, "What the hell guys?", he breathed, his heart still beating abnormally fast in his throat.

"Umm", Tony looked at Nat, obviously in search for help.

Nat rolled her eyes at him, "It's your birthday you asshole!"

Clint gaped at her, weapons completely forgotten at his side.

"You seriously forgot?!", griped Nat, "You literarily would not shut up about this since the day we moved in here! Since the day you got brainwashed you would whine all the time at the fact that it had to happen in the same month of your birthday!"

"I-I never looked at the calendar since we moved in?"

Nat and Tony rolled their eyes almost in simultaneous order. Clint wondered if there was some way of putting their gifts to use, like synchronized swimming, only for eye rolling.

Nat huffed and grabbed a colorful box from behind one of the couches, walked up to Clint and handed it to him, "Happy birthday asshole."

Feeling pretty self-conscious by then with the gun still in one of his hands, Clint did a quick job of putting it back in its place like he had done with the knife and accepted the wrapped box.

It was medium sized and not too heavy, so Clint was practically dying to rip it open and have a peek.

Tony's, "Stop staring at it and open it already!", was all he need and before he knew it he was holding the best gift in the history of gifts.

"The fuck's that?", he heard Tony try to ask in a whisper.

"It's-", Clint had to stop and clear his throat, "It's the new Hawkeye plushie, it was supposed to be released next month, Nat how-", he stopped and looked at her in wonder.

She smiled at him, "I have my ways", she said slyly.

Clint was too happy to be embarrassed as he hugged his plushie close to his chest.

The ice was broken afterwards and the rest of the team surged forward, all bearing gifts and good wishes. Then came the cake – it was bow and arrow themed with purple frosting – and party hats and streamers and –

And then Tony handed him a quiver full of arrows and told him to shoot them into the air. They turned out to be fireworks that exploded a certain time after being fired. They were _awesome_. Most of them were purple colored and some even had shapes.

When they were done with that they went back in to find the alien brothers trying to inflate more balloons for the party and failing spectacularly. Clint was suddenly struck with how in a month's time he had gone from thoroughly hating Loki's guts to actually becoming good friends with him. Once everything had calmed down he and Loki had sat down and talked about their shared trauma and unexpectedly ended up bonding.

He went and helped Loki and Thor with the difficult task of inflating balloons as the team feasted on what was left of the pizza and cake. Then Tony showed up smiling like the cat that had just ate the canary.

"Come let me show you something arrowhead", he began dragging Clint away from the balloon crew.

"Hey, watch that, I'm your elder now", Clint smirked at Tony.

Tony scowled at him, "I'll be 14 too in time, you know?"

"Yeah, but in the meantime I get to be your elder", Clint smirked.

"You're literally just a couple months older than me, asshole", grumbled Tony, though it did nothing to deter Clint's grin.

Tony ended up leading Clint to his room, where among his usual trash – that he swore to Nat he would clean up every time she came by – there was this giant arrow of at least five meters long and as thick as a tree trunk lying on his living room floor with a giant purple bow around it.

"Is that an arrow?", he squeaked, his voice having gone to previously unknown high tones.

"Yup", said Tony proudly, "I'm pretty sure it breaks the world record, though I have yet to confirm that with my people", he shuffled his feet nervously, "Do you-uh-do you like it?"

Clint decided to answer Tony with actions rather than words and went over to hug his newest most precious possession.

"Awww, he liked it", Clint heard Nat say followed by the click of a camera, "Take another one Bruce, I'll need it for later."

"I'm too happy to get mad at you right now", mumbled Clint as he stroked his arrow lovingly.

"Dude, you need help", said Bruce as he obediently took more pictures of Clint hugging and stroking his giant arrow.

"You Midgardians really are odd people", Clint heard Thor say, because of course everybody was going to invade his room now.

"Nah, that's just Clint", said Tony, still sounding entirely too smug than what ought to be healthy.

Clint didn't care, it was the best birthday he had had in his entire damn life.

* * *

 **Thoughts? I'm dying to hear your thoughts!**


	8. INTERLUDE 2

**Shameless Fluff. Also, thank you so much for all the love you people have been leaving me in the reviews, you people are awesome :D**

* * *

It was one of those rare nights when Tony had gone to bed at a reasonable hour, yet he could not make himself to sleep. Or more accurately, he had already fallen half asleep more than once only to abruptly wake up as soon as he began having flashbacks to what had happened only a couple months ago at the Battle of Manhattan.

After giving sleep a try more times than he was comfortable admitting and eventually failing, Tony decided to go make himself some hot milk and see if that might work. He swore that if that also failed he was just going to give up completely on the notion of sleeping that night.

As he stood in the elevator, slumping on the walls to keep him upright – he was tired dammit! – he distantly began to wonder if it was true what some people said about alcohol helping one to fall asleep. He wasn't that desperate yet, but if things didn't make a turn for the better soon he was going to get JARVIS order him some alcohol to be sent to the tower – there wasn't any at the time since they were all minors and Cap might also have a conniption if he saw one of them trying to get drunk – and damn the consequences, he was going to sleep through at least one night, no matter what.

Fortunately he didn't need to start planning on how he was going to first, convince JARVIS that buying him alcohol was a good idea, second, how he was going to hide it from his friends – two of which were spies – and third, how he was going to deal with Cap's face of disappointment when he inevitably found out.

When he arrived at the communal floor he noticed that a couple of his friends were already there. Bruce and Loki both had what looked like glasses of milk in their hands and Nat was leaning on Loki's shoulder, speaking softly. Whatever she was saying had both of the boys at her side slightly smiling.

Just when he was thinking that maybe he could go to another floor to fetch some milk and leave the three to what was obviously a personal moment, the elevator opened behind him and let in Clint. They both blinking owlishly at each other, both unsure as to what to do next.

"Why are you both staring at each other like that?", came Nat's question, right at their side. They both jumped neither having heard nor seen Nat approaching them.

"Um", Tony tried and failed to add after that.

Loki, who had come to join her rolled his eyes at Tony, "Come on, Bruce is making a pot of hot chocolate big enough to satisfy Steve and Thor combined."

And that, apparently, was that. This was why Loki was one of Tony's favorite people. He was such a no nonsense person and always knew when not to make a situation more awkward.

Hot chocolate was served and they all congregated near one of the giant windows of the floor that overlooked the city. Nat and Clint dragged over a couple fluffy rugs that used to be next to the couches which were sometimes sat on when they had movie nights.

Nobody wasted any time to make themselves comfortable on them and dragging a few throw pillows along to make themselves even more comfy. They sat in companionable silence as they watched over the city as they sipped at their hot chocolate.

Tony was already at his second mug of hot chocolate – Bruce made the best hot chocolate Tony had ever tasted – when Cap and Thor made their way in. Cap had a fluffy blanket draped over his shoulders and looked like he had just been woken up from a terrible nightmare if his unruly hair and haunted eyes were anything to go by. Thor had a Hulk themed pillow in his arms that he was hugging and had a teary expression on his face.

The moment Thor saw Loki, who was still sitting at Bruce's side, he gave a great shout of joy – which started Clint, who had begun to doze off – and bounded over to him, dragging Cap along. Bruce quickly scooted away so he wouldn't be smushed by Thor's enthusiasm and let him hug Loki as much as he wished.

"I got worried when I didn't find you in your chambers!", said Thor, emotion making his already breaking voice crack even further. Tony winced and hoped that when he his voice began breaking that it wouldn't sound as awful.

"Brother!", Loki whined and Tony could practically hear the roll in his eyes.

Bruce prepared more hot chocolate and they all settled comfortably again on their fluffy rug. Clint had gone for a couple blankets and now they were all suitably swaddled in fluffiness as they cradled their hot deliciousness.

Tony was just about to fall asleep just by contentedness when Thor tried to ask Loki something in a low voice, but came out as louder.

"What were you all doing here Loki?"

Loki, who had also looked like he was about to fall asleep looked at annoyed at Thor. Thor didn't notice.

"We couldn't sleep", offered Nat from where she was cuddled against Clint.

Thor nodded, "I couldn't either, so I went to check on Loki, but he wasn't at his chambers, so I panicked", he smiled sheepishly, "I went to wake Steven", at this he cast a worried look at Cap, who was at Tony's side, "He agreed to help look for Loki. It was his idea to come here."

Cap smiled blushingly and waved it off.

Tony stared at Cap, specifically at the dark circles around his eyes, "You look like shit", he proclaimed.

Cap gave him a look that conveyed exactly how unimpressed he was with Tony, but Tony waved him off and motioned around the circle, "We all pretty much look like shit", when nobody protested he went on, "I, for one haven't slept through the night since the day after Battle", he tried to relax his fidgeting fingers as he gazed into his mug, "It's all been pretty much shit, ever since then."

There was a moment of silence until Bruce began talking, "Well-", but then he aborted his attempt, focusing back at his mug.

"Go on", prompted Loki gently, who was still sitting at his side.

Bruce bit his lower lip and went on, "What I wanted to say is – ever since", he paused, "Since the Battle it's been the first time in almost three years that I've had a place that I could comfortably call a home. I – I've had friends before, on my run across the world, but- but they never lasted. There was always something that happened. Either it was the military breaking in and tearing everything apart, or the Hulk smashing everything to pieces, or- or I had to leave because I'd been around for too long", he took a deep breath, "It might sound selfish to you, but these last months have been the best in my life since almost forever."

Silence descended on the group for a while.

Clint was the first to break it, "I was nine when I ran away from the circus and even smaller when I ran away from home. I was almost immediately taken in by SHIELD after I began going out solo. I got into some deep shit very quick. They looked up my pa- guardians and realized I was better off far away from them. They fixed me some papers or something so I wouldn't have to worry about them ever again. I remember thinking back then that it was the best day of my life. Then I met Nat and brought her over to SHIELD and then I thought it was the best day ever", Nat snorted at this, "Yeah, even if I had broken my arm and got banned from ever returning to Budapest, I was still pretty hyped at having a partner my age. Truth is being a child soldier isn't all that awesome if you're all alone."

He went silent for a moment as he collected his thoughts, "Truth is even with Nat around things still got pretty bad from time to time, especially if we got sent to different missions and couldn't contact each other for months sometimes. So then we got to join the Avengers it was pretty much the first time for both of us, that we got to spend time with people our age without having to worry about them hurting us, or us hurting them", he paused as he seemed to mull over what he'd said, "So yeah, I'm pretty sure that joining the Avengers counts as the best thing that's ever happened to us", and with that he shared a grin with Nat.

"I think we can all agree that being Avengers is the best thing ever", said Tony, "Just that the nightmares aren't", he nodded to himself, "To be fair though, I've had my fair share of nightmares long before I joined this gig."

Some of them looked at him with a mix of sympathy and understanding, which isn't to say that Tony totally hated it, but he really did totally hate it.

"I still dream of the war", said Cap so softly that Tony almost missed it, "And then of waking up. It was a quite a shock when I managed to run out of the place and into the streets", he gave a grim smile, "I sometimes still wonder what Bucky would have thought of this era, he was always the bigger lover for technology than I was", he looked up at the group, "It was his idea to go to the Stark Expo, he wanted to see what was the newest inventions", he was silent for a moment, "That's where I finally got enlisted."

Silence didn't take over the group this time, "I dream of when I fell of the Bifrost", admitted Loki.

Thor looked at him with pained eyes, "I dream of that too. I'm always trying to catch you and failing"

"I dream the same about Bucky", said Cap and shared a sad smile with Thor.

"I dream of the people I've hurt when I'm out of control", said Bruce as he hugged his knees closer to his body.

"Something similar here", muttered Clint.

"I dream of the wormhole", admitted Tony, "I- I really thought I was going to die then, hell, I thought I actually had", he almost jumped when Cap hugged him closer with his arm.

"I dream of when they called me to tell me Clint had been compromised", said Nat quietly.

They shared some more stories of what they dreamed about during the following hours and eventually, one by one they began dropping off to sleep.

It was some of the best sleep Tony had ever had in his life.

* * *

 **This is how they forge their own little family**


	9. INTERLUDE 3

**Here is the last of the Interludes! After this chapter we will finally get back to the plot-related chapters.**

* * *

"Order! Order in the court!"

"This isn't a court Tony."

"Please Tony, I've been in a court for too long for this."

"So has he for that matter."

"This is my table and there'll be order!"

"Can we please just all settle and let him have his moment of delusion so we can all go back to our lives?"

"Loki! You hurt me, right here, in my heart."

"I'll have y'all know I'm missing Dog Cops for this."

"I was going to the museum of Natural Science with Thor."

"You're all so boring."

"I abandoned my pedicure for this Tony, it better be good."

"I was doing some tests at the lab."

"Ugh, fine, fine. Let's start this then people, do you all have a seat?"

"Tony."

"Okay, okay. So as you all probably know, recently, moi – that is to say, me – gained emancipation."

"Yes, we all know, you wouldn't stop pestering us all about it throughout the whole process."

"You hung up a framed copy of your emancipation in each floor."

"I went with you every day to the court as moral support as well as Bruce."

"We all were at you celebratory party."

"Along with most of New York."

"They almost took a couple of us to jail for disturbing the peace."

"You made international news when you fired Clint's birthday arrow out of the tower."

"My poor arrow."

"We got it back didn't we? Okay, okay, no need to glare at me. Okay, so the thing we're all here for is this!"

There was silence as everybody leaned forward to see the small item he was presenting them.

"A driving license? Who in their right mind would give _you_ a diving license of all things?!"

"Hey!"

"We're doomed."

"Why do you even want one?"

"Yeah, you've got the suit."

"Please tell me you're not going to participate in any races."

"Ooooh! I had forgotten about that! That was just so awesome!"

"He almost got killed!"

"What? When did this happen?

"Ages ago."

"Last year."

"Google it gramps, now everybody, let me tell you the true reason of why you're here!"

"There's _more_?!"

"We're doomed."

"Shush, it can't get worse than this."

"Hurry up, I can still catch the last end of Dog Cops."

"I want poptarts."

Sigh, "Yes, yes, just wait for him to finish."

"Thank you, now. JARVIS!"

The room filled with the sound of a drum roll.

"My newest genius plan! Lady and Gentlemen! Now that we no longer only have one authorized driver!"

"What?"

"Huh?"

"Who else has a driver's license?"

"Since we no longer have only one, but now two drivers! My newest project!"

The drum roll got to its end and trumpets sounded.

"A road trip!"

"A WHAT?!"

"WHAT?!"

" _No_."

"Tony, _no_."

"Shush, this is genius, besides, I already got a minivan."

"We're doomed."

"Let there be mercy on our souls."

"Does anybody know how the Hail Mary goes?"

"You'll need something stronger than that."

"Come oooonnnnn guuuuuyyyyysss, it's not that bad."

"I think I've got a spare rosary in my room that I never use."

"Hey! Guuuuuyyyyyss!"

Sigh, "Who's the other driver?"

"That'll be Cap."

"Whaaaaaaa-"

"How?"

"Um, how? I'm pretty sure I don't have a license."

"You drove through battlefields in WWII, you can handle the streets of America. I already called Fury, don't worry, it's all been settled."

"Steve, do something, I'm too young to die."

"I- I have a license?"

"Yes!"

Bated silence.

"Where are we going?"

"We're doomed."

* * *

The minivan, thankfully, turned out to be not that 'mini'. Nor a van.

"This isn't a van, Tony", said Steve in his infinite patience.

"Of course it is."

Clint decided to have mercy on Steve, "Tony", he began in a tone that he hoped imitated Steve's, Tony gave him a sideways distrustful look as a reward for his efforts. The ungrateful brat.

"Where do you think the word 'mini' fits with this thing?", Clint continued, ignoring Tony's look.

"Well, it does seem too small for one of those moms that carpool kids to school. Hopefully it'll be enough for us."

"Tony, that thing is big enough to home a mom with a dozen kids", said Clint as he held his face in his hands.

"No way."

Steve was looking pained, "Tony", he tried and stayed silent for a while, "That thing is a home. A mobile home."

"Otherwise known as camper", added Clint.

"Nuh-uh, that's-"

"What's a RV doing in your garage Tony?", asked Bruce as he came out of the elevator, "Where's the minivan? Nat wants to know how much space she has to pack stuff, Thor wants to take food, but I told him we'd probably stop along the way to California each time we wanted to eat."

Tony pressed his lips tightly together, "JARVIS!", he called.

"Yes, Sir?"

"What is that thing, and what is its purpose?", he asked as he pointed at the camper.

"It's a recreational vehicle, otherwise known as a camper, motor home, mobile home, RV, or trailer. Its purpose is a self-contained traveling home. It has basic facilities for cooking, washing, and sleeping."

Tony looked like somebody had told him that Christmas had been cancelled.

Bruce subtlety creeped up to Clint's side and whispered, "He thought that was a minivan, didn't he?"

Clint nodded and whispered back, "I think we sometimes forget that Tony lived most of his life holed up in a mansion at Malibu with no real contact to the rest of the world."

Bruce nodded as he looked with sympathy at Tony, where Steve was patting him on the back and telling him they'd make it work.

Clint sighed. In Loki's words, they were doomed.

* * *

The camper, to put it lightly, was gigantic. It had two bedrooms and two folded beds in the living room, so they had space to spare at the end to sleep in. Thor and Loki shared one of the bedrooms while Tony and Bruce shared the other one. Steve and Clint shared one of the foldable beds in the living room while Natasha got the last foldable bed for herself.

This was all decided before they even started with the trip.

Bruce and Thor – with Loki's help – quickly made a list of all the things they were going to need for the kitchen and the two little bathrooms. Steve began making schedules for the bathrooms while they were on and off the road and also made schedules for who was going to ride when – it was decided that they could probably slip Clint in the drive sometimes at night when they were in the middle of nowhere and they were sure there would be no police to stop them.

Tony immediately started to cart off stuff from his lab to hide in his bedroom that he was going to share with Bruce. He had been discreet about it, which tipped Natasha off that he probably wasn't supposed to be doing it, so she told Steve about it and he put an end to it, most likely saving all of their lives in the process from an almost certain fire.

Steve also made up a list of suggested things they should all take with them along with a list of things they definitely shouldn't take with them, most of the latter directed at Tony.

The night before the trip he even made rounds to make sure everybody was packed or at the very least in the process of it. It created a squabble when it was uncovered that Tony had been trying to smuggle a bunch of robot parts along with some chemicals that had the sticker 'flammable' on them.

Bruce was given the dubious honorable title of Tony's babysitter afterwards, his duty being that Tony didn't kill them all while they slept in the camper. Nobody said anything about that fact that Bruce was 11 and Tony 13, but Bruce did look a little smug at the title for a full five minutes before it dawned on him that it wasn't that much of an honorable title to have after all.

The next morning at 5am Steve was running up and down the tower waking them all out. From her bed Natasha could hear how he got into a scuffle with Clint in the floor beneath her, probably having had to drag him out of his bed or something. Clint was a terrible morning person.

So Natasha got up after giving herself 15 minutes extra bed time – Clint was a terrible influence – and went to take a shower and wash her hair. She reveled in her hot water, having doubts of when she was going to have access again to such a commodity.

She was blowing her hair dry when she heard Steve knock at her door and urge her on. She glanced at the clock and saw it was 6am already.

"I'll be ready in a bit", she called and he left her to it, probably thinking of somebody else whose responsibility he trusted less.

She picked a comfortable pair of black pants and the cream colored blouse with embroidery around the collar she had seen the other day at a store and just knew it had to be hers, along with some light brown boots to wear for the day. Sometimes she wondered how things would be if she had still been a spy working for the Red Room. There would be no room of her own, that was for sure, and she particularly liked this room a lot. It had taken her a long time to decide on the curtains, but at the end she had chosen a pair that combined lovingly with the carpet and her bedspread. The bathroom also looked nothing like it had when she got it.

If she had still been with the Red Room there would be no bathroom of her own. Also, no exquisitely combined curtains and bedspread. No nothing really. Except death. Lots and lots of death.

After packing her hair dryer she set to apply her make-up. At the Red Room they had showed them about this, but only enough to enhance their seductive prowess.

Natasha mostly liked the skin colored make-up for a normal day, so different from the deep colors the Red Room preferred.

As she was applying her lipstick there came another series of knocks at her door.

"Natasha! We are supposed to leave at 7!"

She glanced at her clock and saw it was still 6:44, more than enough time for her to finish her make-up, pack it, walk calmly into the elevator, go to the camper and wait for the others to finish for the next half an hour to a full hour.

"Aha", was all she was able to say as she finished the last touches on her lipstick.

"She's 15, let her at it", she heard Clint say from the other side of the door. Ah, he had finally come like he had promised the previous day, if a little late.

After quickly packing her make-up she opened the door and let Clint in.

"Where's Steve?", she asked when she saw he was no longer stalking her door.

"Went to hurry up Thor again. He woke up at 6 and hadn't finished his packing last night. Which one do I grab?", he asked her as he pointed at her bags. There were two black bags along with a lilac suitcase with wheels that Natasha was going to take along.

"Take either of the black ones, don't care", she said as she slid out the handle of her lilac suitcase.

Clint grabbed one and Natasha grabbed the other one along with her suitcase and they were out.

Natasha was seated in the RV at exactly 6:57.

She was the only one.

Clint had gone back to grab more luggage from somebody, their chat group was spammed with Thor asking where certain things were.

20 minutes later Bruce came to join her. They began discussing the roads they were going to take and the places they were hoping to cram into their trip.

By 7:48 Clint came to join them, claiming that he was tired of waiting on Thor and Tony to discover more things they wanted to bring along. Apparently Tony had also never finished packing the previous night.

At 8:06 Loki joined them and fell asleep seconds later on the couch that was a foldable bed.

At 8:18 Thor began spamming the chat group with questions of where Loki was.

At 8:34 Steve came dragging both Tony and Thor into the RV.

Finally, finally, they were leaving.

Tony wanted to be the first to drive, but Steve gave him one glare and then Tony was forced to sit by a sleeping Loki on the couch.

Natasha had shotgun because she had been the first to arrive and had been the only one on time.

Ten minutes later they were stuck in the traffic and the traffic officers were giving the RV stink eyes.

Natasha fell asleep at some point, but at 10:11 she was woken up when she noticed that they had stopped to eat breakfast. They were still in New York. More specifically, Tribeca.

The diner wasn't the best, but it apparently offered bathrooms for customers and Clint had been complaining for at least half an hour that he wanted to go, so Steve pulled over.

"What are we doing in Tribeca?", asked Natasha, because she just couldn't understand how they had still not left the island.

Steve gave her the look of a man that had gone to war and lost. Considering that he had actually been to a war, it spoke volumes of his pain.

They left at 11:17, right after Steve threatened to take away Tony and Clint's driving privileges.

By midday they had finally left the island.

* * *

On the second day of the trip they're they were in Philadelphia and Steve was herding them through all the sightseeing and Bruce managed to convince them to go to some museums in the area. They got spotted a couple times and made the news.

On the third day of the trip they made it to Washington. They arrived early so they had the whole day to go sightseeing. Late that night they were kicked out of the Smithsonian and outvoted Steve on staying another day at the capital.

The rest of the trip was filled with less sightseeing and more bickering and getting lost often. While they were in Missouri they let Clint take the wheel for the night and the next morning they were in Chicago. When asked how or why Clint only gave a mumbled reply of winning a racing bet.

It was decided to never let him drive alone at night again.

They had just barely gone back on track in Iowa when Tony took the wheel and the next thing they knew they were somewhere in Kansas and he swore he knew what he was doing, pointed Steve in a direction and told him to continue that-a-way while he took his obligatory nap and then he could go on.

They scoured the map while he was sleeping, but nobody could find out where exactly they were, or on which road they were.

Tony took the wheel again a few hours later and drove right into the night. He was supposed to change with Clint at some point during the night, but they all awoke the next morning when Loki saw they had stopped at a gas station and that all their alarms had been disabled. It was long after they were all supposed to be awake, so they all bounded out of the RV, most still in pajamas and went to confront Tony.

As they did this Loki and Bruce went to the store and asked where the ever loving fuck were they.

Turned out they had just passed Dallas.

Tony was banned from his driving privileges after he explained that he was trying to get them to Houston – a thing that they had discussed before they left the Tower and agreed was too far out of their way so they would be skipping it this time – and Steve took over driving again.

Since they were already so close to Houston and because Bruce mentioned he also wanted to see the place Steve eventually decided to complete the trip to Houston.

The visit didn't last that long, especially after Tony trespassed to get a closer look at their space tech and almost got sent to jail.

They ended up accidentally crossing the border on their way to California and before anybody could understand how that had happened they found themselves driving on the border of the Sonoran Desert and almost upended the RV when Clint and Tony began fighting for the wheel while Steve was asleep. After this, Natasha decided that she had had enough and called the border police, asking them to help them find their way back across the American side of the border.

They stayed the night at an Indian Reservation close to the border once they were back to the American side, which Clint loved and the local economy loved even more.

Next they passed through the Colorado Desert where Clint once again went racing against other vehicles on the road, this time at least with some supervision. And then, at long last, they were in California.

It didn't take long before they were in Los Angeles and after that even less to arrive at Malibu.

Tony twirled around as he stepped into his mansion, showing it off to his friends as they made their way inside.

"This, lady and gentlemen, is my humble abode", he said happily.

Natasha snorted.

"It'll do, I suppose", said Loki as he looked around.

"Hey."

* * *

 **This idea presented in this chapter came to me before I even started to write this story, so I always knew there was going to be a road trip included somewhere in this story XD**  
 **Also, I've never been to America, so if I got anything wrong about distances and whatnot, please tell me :)**


	10. IRON MAN 3

**Like promised, the interludes are over (for now) and we're finally back on track :D**

* * *

They had been a grand total of one week at the Malibu mansion, most of the time not even being there since they went out almost every day to do sightseeing and to leave Tony with his older friends, Pepper and Rhodey. Only Nat knew them well, the rest of the team had seen them in a passing as they either came in or left the mansion

Steve was starting to get restless and sort of wanted to go back home to New York, or at least somewhere else that wasn't Los Angeles so Tony suggested they take the RV without him and go to San Diego for some time.

Steve had still been enjoying the wonders of Sea World when he heard that there had been a terrorist attack in Los Angeles and that Tony had given the world his home address.

They had just gotten Thor out of the Penguin Observation Park when they heard that Tony's mansion had been bombed and that he was missing.

Bruce had hulked out there and then, which made them arrive at the mansion destruction site even later than what they would have liked.

At the site they encountered Pepper, Rhodey and some random woman who claimed to have known Howard and had tried to come talk to Tony about something. All three had been present when the bombs hit the mansion and according to Pepper Tony had fallen into the ocean along with most of his house without his suit.

This didn't sit well on Steve. There wasn't much to be done, they weren't experts in search and rescue and the local authorities were still worried that here might be another attack.

They went back to the RV with extreme reluctance after Rhodey and Pepper left for the hospital where Tony's driver was and the random lady eventually just disappeared. Steve didn't trust her or her claims to have known Howard, so he contacted SHIELD to tell them about her.

As the team sat in tense silence in the RV Steve sat at the driver's seat while he waited as calm as he could for SHIELD to send him some answers about what had happened and who the random lady was.

Steve laid his head on the steering wheel, closing his eyes tightly as he whispered, "Be safe Tony."

* * *

Tony had been excited at the idea of coming back to Malibu. He had planned on visiting Pep and Rhodey daily, sometimes join the team in the sightseeing and design things at night.

Of course he had sort of forgotten about his anxiety problems.

He had mostly stopped having nightmares about what had happened at Manhattan after he talked with the team, but he never thought about what might happen once he got separated from them.

At his very first night back at the mansion and he dreamed about Manhattan.

He decided that his best cure would be going down to his garage to begin working on a new design he had in mind.

Three days later he had the most awful nightmare, combining both the Battle of Manhattan and Yinsen's death. That night he went crazy in his garage and created his first prototype of the Hulk Buster.

The team wasn't really noticing what was going on with him cause he told them often he was going to spent the night at either Pepper's or at Rhodey's. He never even once went to spend the night with them.

It came to the point where he had a panic attack while he was having lunch with Rhodey.

That night, as he sat in his garage designing his newest suit his hand shook and his mind was scattered. The smallest of noises, the most insignificant gesture, a certain smell and he was back there. 'There' being either the wormhole or in that cave in Afghanistan or the weird combination of the two that his sleep deprived mind had concocted.

Hours later he came back to himself and realized he had been making a bunch of lines and scribbles on his drawing pad. Most of them without any head or tails, there was one design of some sort of dog robot, but it had fangs and its eyes were-. Nope. Nah-ah.

He deleted everything that he had done that night and went to try get some sleep. He had just taken a shower when JARVIS alerted him of what happened with Happy.

Everything was awful. Happy had been talking to him about some suspicious guy talking to the local branch head, but Tony had just laughed it off and told Happy to take it calmly. Why couldn't he just have listened?

Tony dozed off at the hospital at Happy's side, but was rudely awakened by another nightmare.

Deciding that he was going to do something about what had been done to Happy he went outside and told the world where he lived. Let them come try fuck with him.

In the end they did fuck him over, not only that, but they also almost fucked over Pepper, Rhodey and that weird ass lady too. Not that he cared that much about the lady, she looked down right fishy with her story about knowing Howard and how he had given her the key to her research and she was just sure Tony could help her get to the next and-. Ugh. Bla, bla, bla.

Why couldn't she just do her own fucking research instead of relying on Starks her whole life?

Tony was in fact just about to kindly tell her to go fuck herself and to go get a life when the missiles started arriving.

So his first priority were his friends and he did have his awesome new suit that he got to fly both Pep and Rhodey out. Fortunately he saw the lady escaping on her own so he didn't have to worry about her, unfortunately on the other hand, this was the last he saw before he fell into the ocean.

His suit did thankfully get to him before he could get squashed by his own mansion, but he still got knocked out pretty badly and only awoke hours later when he crashed landed in a pile of snow of all things.

It wasn't a pleasant experience to say the least. JARVIS running out of energy on him almost sent him into another panic attack. He clung to the suit pathetically as he forced tears to stop and tried to kick his rational mind into gear by repeating to himself over and over again that JARVIS was in no way gone forever.

JARIVS was one of the few constants in his life. He vaguely remembered his old servant Jarvis that would be with him more than either of his parents ever were. The original Jarvis died a few months before his parents did. Tony remembered sitting at his bedside as the old man was dying and recording his voice secretly, already having made plans of how he was going to bring Jarvis back later.

His plans didn't work out exactly like he had wished, but he was a genius without precedent and by age six he had the first version of JARVIS running his mansion for him. Surprisingly little had been changed since then, seeing as he had made JARVIS to be a learning program he had mostly modified himself into what he was today.

But the point was that since he had been a six year old he had been in constant company of his non-corporeal companion, except for that brief stint in Afghanistan, but there he had Yinsen who had done everything he could to help Tony both physically and emotionally.

After he managed to gather himself enough he succeeded in dragging his suit along with him with great difficulty. He might be 13, but he wasn't as fit as he would have liked and there was still the issue of his heart damage to take into consideration.

There were days where he wondered if he would live his full lifespan with the damage his heart had taken.

After stealing a poncho off of a wooden statue he eventually stumbled upon a house where the lock on the garage looked adequately feeble.

He had just managed to connect the suit to some electrical charger and to fall down on the couch, hoping to catch some rest, when he was rudely interrupted by some brat with a potato gun of all things.

They made friends. Eventually.

* * *

"Good", Tony stood awkwardly by the car he had just managed to hotwire and then glanced at Harley, "Bye", he said and hastily made to climb in.

"Wait!", Harley insisted, Tony had known this would happen. The brat would now want to follow him and normally Tony didn't have anything against children trying to save the day, but said children normally weren't, well, normal.

"Look", Tony began exasperatedly, "I know you think this is a good idea, but it really isn't-"

"I just helped you fight those bad guys!"

"Yeah, but what'll happen when you have to face off an international terrorist? Hmm? The same trick isn't going to work for him."

Harley scowled at him, "We're basically the same age!"

"I'm one year older than you."

Harley rolled his eyes, "I'm taller than you."

"Look here you little motherfucker-"

"Okay, okay!", Harley held up his hands in surrender, "Not mentioning that again, promise. But seriously, you need help", he put a hand on his chest and empathically added, "And I can help."

Tony scowled at him, rolled his eyes and sighed, "Fine, get it."

Harley whooped and took the seat beside Tony.

"First things first", Tony said and Harley nodded, eyes wide in attention, "We'll need the suit and a way to charge it, we're gonna go grab it now and it's gonna be your job to make sure nothing goes FUBAR, got it?"

Harley nodded, still wide eyed, "What's FUBAR?"

"Google it, we don't have time to waste", said Tony as he hit the gas, causing Harley to yelp as the pulled away with a jerk.

After the monumental task that was to bundle in the suit and all the car batteries plus computers that they could find into the car's back seat they were both off into the horizon. They covered a great distance until Tony spotted a news van close by that he decided would help him contact his friends and tell him he was still alive. And also maybe figure out where the Mandarin was. Harley was delegated to car duty where he monitored to suit and make sure nobody came to steal their stolen car.

"Karma has its own weird ways of getting even", said Tony when Harley gave him a look at that last part.

The Avengers almost burst his eardrums when the call connected and he told them it was him. Cap told him in no uncertain terms that he was not to go after the Mandarin and Tony retaliated by telling him the address of the Mandarin and when to meet him there. And since the guy that was so deeply obsessed with him – and wasn't that just all kinds of creepy – was still holding the antennae patiently he decided that he could as well contact Rhodey and Pep and tell Rhodey to come meet him at the same place he had told the team.

There was afterwards the issue of the suit not charging and him having a panic attack, but fortunately Harley was there and he had already experienced one of those so he knew what to do.

They had to make a detour to the local market where they went crazy, then they rented a hotel room and began assembling all that was needed. Harley proofed to be fairly adept at doing what Tony told him to do and to actually understand some of the stuff when Tony explained them to him.

"So does this mean I'm an Avenger too?", asked Harley hopefully as he assembled a gas bomb.

"Pffft, keep dreaming", said Tony, ignoring Harley's pout.

Tony drove them close to the mansion where he knew the Mandarin was, ordered Harley to drive away the moment Tony was out of view and go to the designated safe place where the suit was to finish charging.

Harley agreed obediently and Tony would have found this weird if it wasn't for Harley's gleeful expression when he learned that he was going to get to drive a car.

Entering the mansion was, well, not easy, but definitely easier than what Tony had thought it would be.

The Mandarin was a disappointment. Like, such, such a disappointment that Tony wondered if he would ever be able to recover from it.

Like, daaaaaammnnn.

And then he got captured.

Shame on him, really.

Killian was in the middle of his evil speech of how Tony was going to help him finish the formula his father had helped the crazy lady with – who was now bleeding on the floor after she tried to defend Tony and use herself as bargaining chip and failed terribly – when the Avengers plus Rhodey crashed into the place.

The ensuing battle was the stuff nightmares are made of with all the glowing people that exploded randomly and Killian – with glowing eyes and all – proclaiming to having been the Mandarin all along. Distantly, Tony wondered what had happened with Trevor since he was nowhere to be seen while they all wreaked havoc on the mansion.

Later, he would learn that Harley snuck in after the suit charged, found Trevor, had pity on him and lead him away from danger.

Fortunately the suit had finished charging fairly soon into the fight and since it was so close it only took seconds for Tony to have all of the pieces on him and promptly started to kick ass.

The fight didn't last all that long, really, not with all of the Avengers plus Rhodey – who was christened as the War Machine in the aftermath of the fight – involved in taking everything down. The Hulk practically decimated the place and what he didn't get his grubby hands on Thor electrocuted till it was ashes. The little structure that was left over was full of either arrows or marks where Cap's shield had bounced off and the odd bad guy tied to some pillar by Nat.

On the bright side, they were able to save the crazy lady since War Machine was able to rush her to a hospital when the fight began. On the not so bright side, the media had a field day showcasing the destruction that they were capable of.

Not that any of that bothered any of them. Tony's friends were all simply too happy to have him back to care much about was being said of them on the media, besides, they had to celebrate having a new member. Rhodey was invited to the Avengers after his performance that day and he graciously accepted.

Pepper was a bit upset that they would both be going away to New York afterwards, but promised to come visiting as much as she could after Tony gave her a private jet of her own, so she wouldn't have to depend anymore on asking her parents for permission. The looks Mr. and Mrs. Potts gave him after that little stunt could have killed any lesser human.

His robots had to be fished out of the Pacific and Harley had to be dropped off back at his home, but eventually all was set and Tony was able to go back with his friends to New York. This time though, they forwent the whole road trip in the RV and instead had it send back to New York by his people, in case they ever wanted to subject themselves again to the disaster that _that_ had been.

All in all, Tony was in good enough spirits that he arranged a new garage for Harley and even kept contact with him after everything had settled down and no, he still wasn't an Avenger even if he made pouty faces at everybody when denied.

That brat.

* * *

 **There needs to be more love for Harley in this world.**


End file.
